Halloween: Origin of the Spookiest Holiday
October 31 of each year is reserved to celebrate Halloween. Many of us celebrate this holiday by carving jack-o-lanterns, dressing up in costumes, attending parties, or trick-or-treating the neighborhood in search of sweet treats! Have you ever wondered why we do these things on Halloween? Well, many of the traditions we carry on originated from the ancient Celts of Western Europe.
2000 years ago, the Celtic festival of Samhain was celebrated, which translates to “summers end” in Gaelic. This festival welcomed the harvest and marked the start of the Celtic New Year. The Celts celebrating Samhain believed there was a brief period where the barriers between the physical world and the spirit world were weakened, allowing ghosts of the dead to cross over and interact with humans. On the ancient Celtic day of the dead, it was believed that all types of beings were roaming the Earth from the spirit of loved ones to fairies, demons, and even witches.
To avoid being detected, the Celts would dress up in costumes resembling evil spirits to blend in with other evil spirits that were wandering around. Irish Celtic farmers lit bonfires near their farms and carved horrifying faces into turnips or beets, then embedded them with coal, to ward off fairies and witches. Eventually, they began using bright orange pumpkins to make their jack-o-lanterns. Even trick-or-treating is thought to derive from the ancient Irish and Scottish practice of mumming. A few nights before Samhain, people would dress in costumes and go door-to-door singing songs or reciting verses to the dead, in exchange for food or money.
As the Celtic immigrants came to America, they brought various Samhain traditions with them. Different customs and beliefs began to mesh together in the colonies and soon the American version of the holiday was born. Colonial Halloween festivities featured the telling of ghost stories, dressing up in costumes to go house to house asking for food or money, and various mischief-making activities.
Halloween is celebrated in many different forms all around the world and most cultures have put their spin on the original ancient Celtic traditions. Whether you are a scare-seeking adult or a candy-loving child, today’s Halloween traditions have something for everyone!