What Is the History of Halloween?

The word itself, “Halloween,” actually originates in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, “All Hallows Day” (or “All Saints Day”), serves as a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, people officially marked the end of summer on October 31. They called the holiday Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.

One story states that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would return in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. They believed it to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts held that all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to possess anyone. So on the night of October 31, villagers extinguished the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They then dressed up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that the Druids kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach. Some accounts tell how the Celts burned someone at the stake who they thought had already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.

The Celtic practices were adopted by the Romans as their own. But in the first century AD, some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October assimilated Samhain into their celebrations, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween, serves as the symbol of Pomona.

The practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, people took on a more ceremonial role by dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches. Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine brought the custom of Halloween to America in the 1840s. At that time, New Englanders included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates as their favorite pranks.

Researchers believe that the Irish Celts did not originate the custom of trick-or-treating, but rather a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians walked from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants.

The more soul cakes the beggars received, the more prayers they promised to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, people believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably originates from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree.

Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree. According to the folk tale, after Jack died, God denied him entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but the devil also denied him access to Hell because he had tricked him. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. Jack placed the ember inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

The Irish used turnips as their “Jack’s lanterns” originally. But when immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So Americans created the Jack-O-Lantern as a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember. So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite “holiday,” the day itself did not grow out of evil practices.

It originated from the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and from Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches host Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it. Christians started Halloween as the day that the portal from the dead and the living was open thus spreading doom to the living.

Content for this question contributed by Caryn Franklin, resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA