Another Halloween is almost upon us.
History
Halloween began more than 2,000 years ago as a pre-Christian Celtic festival called “Samhain” (pronounced “sow-in” and meaning summer’s end). It marked the changing seasons and the final day of the harvest. While it was celebrated on November 1, it kicked off the night before. The ancient Celts (who lived in today’s Ireland, U.K., and northern France) believed the boundary between the world of the living and the dead was thinnest this last night of their year, allowing the ghosts of the dead to return. To ward off these spirits, people wore costumes and lit sacrificial bonfires.
The merge of Samhain with Christianity began in the seventh century with the establishment of the Catholic feast of All Christian Martyrs’ Day. Just over a century later, another Pope expanded the festival to include saints and it became All Saints’ Day. But it took another century before the holiday was added to the universal Christian calendar.
The name Halloween goes back to medieval Christianity. Hallow comes from the word holy or saint. The Christian holiday on November 1 became known as All Hallows’ (Saints’) Day, and the night before it was All Hallows’ Eve. (Hallows’ Eve eventually became Halloween.) In 1000 A.D., the Catholic Church designated November 2 as All Souls’ Day—a day to honor the dead. The celebrations (October 31-November 2) became a three-day holiday called Hallowtide.
Did You Know…
- The first All Saints’ Day was May 13. It wasn’t until the eighth century that the Pope changed the date to November 1.
Holiday
Halloween arrived in the U.S. with some of the first immigrants. However, it wasn’t widely observed because of its pagan roots. (As you might imagine, the Puritans didn’t participate.) The first American colonial Halloween celebrations featured large public parties with singing, dancing, and commemorating the harvest. They also included the telling of ghost stories and all kinds of mischief-making.
By the mid-1800s, fall festivals were common but not Halloween. It wasn’t until the Irish potato famine of the 1840s drove Irish immigrants to the U.S. that the holiday’s popularity rose. Still, it wasn’t until the 1920s that the holiday really spread across the nation.
Did You Know…
- The traditional orange and black Halloween colors (also originated with Samhain) represent the “death” of summer (black) and the autumn harvest season (orange).
- Halloween is second only to Christmas as a commercial holiday in the U.S.
- According to the National Retail Federation, consumers spent about nine billion dollars on Halloween in 2019.
Traditions
Most Halloween traditions—trick-or-treating, wearing costumes, carving jack-o’-lanterns—originated (in some form) with Samhain. Over time, these practices and beliefs changed, and new ones were added. Americans borrowed the European Halloween traditions, which gradually morphed into what we see today.
One tradition you might not associate with Halloween was the belief that this was a time young women could discover their true love through various tricks with yarn, mirrors, or apples. For example, women in the 1700s tossed an unbroken apple peel over their shoulder hoping to see the initials of their true love. In the 1800s, women bobbed for apples hoping to find their romantic match. Each apple represented a specific suitor, and the one she bit (apple, not suitor) denoted her future husband.
Did You Know…
- The tradition of bobbing for apples traces its roots to a courting ritual in a Roman festival honoring the goddess of agriculture and abundance. The Romans took it with them when they conquered the British Isles in 43 A.D., and the festival soon blended into Samhain.
- Associating bats with Halloween also began with Samhain. The large bonfires lit during the festival attracted insects, which attracted bats. But it was the medieval folks who expanded the eeriness of bats with several superstitions of them being omens of death.
- While brooms were primarily associated with women, the first witch to confess to riding a broom was a man, Guillaume Edelin. He was a priest near Paris and was arrested in 1453. Of course, his confession was tortured out of him, so…
- By the 1600s, broomstick-riding witches were common.
Halloween Bonus
Did You Know…
- The first Jack-O’-Lanterns originated in Ireland and were turnips instead of pumpkins.
- According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the state that produces the most pumpkins is Illinois. Over 15,000 acres are devoted to growing over 500 million pounds of the orange gourd annually.
- The word pumpkin originated from the Greek word Pepõn, which means large melon.
- The heaviest pumpkin in the world was grown in Belgium in 2016. The heaviest one in the U.S. was grown in New Hampshire in 2018. The Belgium pumpkin weighed in at 2,624 pounds, while the U.S. pumpkin weighed in at 2,528 pounds.
- A New Jersey candymaker accidentally invented candy apples in 1908. He wanted to showcase his new, red, cinnamon candy before Christmas, so he dipped apples on sticks into the red glaze. Rather than buying the candies, customers who saw his shop window display bought the candy-coated apples. They soon became a standard Halloween treat.
- The top-selling Halloween candy is not M&M’s, Snickers, or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s Skittles. Candy corn is in the top ten while also being rated as one of the worst Halloween candies.
- Candy corn was originally called “chicken feed” and sold in a box with a rooster on the front and the slogan: Something Worth Crowing For. The recipe has barely changed since the 1880s.