Kristine
On the evening of October 31st every year, Americans celebrate Halloween by dressing up in costumes, passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, and decorating their homes with carved pumpkins and other seasonal decor.
Today, Halloween is mostly about enjoying the cool autumn weather and indulging in spooky ghost stories, but this centuries-old holiday has been influenced by several religions and cultural traditions throughout its long history.
Celtic Origins
Over 2,000 years ago, ancient Celts celebrated the new year on November 1st, as this time marked the transition from summer to winter. During this transitional time, the Celts believed that “the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred,” and it was thought that dead spirits could return to Earth on October 31st. The festival of Samhain stemmed from this spiritual belief.
When the Roman Empire conquered most of the Celtic territory around 43 AD, the traditional autumn festivals of the Romans slowly combined with the Celtic celebration of Samhain over hundreds of years of cultural diffusion. One Roman holiday, which was held in late October, was created to honor the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of this goddess is an apple, which eventually led to the tradition of “bobbing for apples,” a game that’s still played at Halloween parties today.
Christian Influences
Throughout the 800s, Christian beliefs were spreading throughout the Roman empire, including Celtic regions. The Catholic Church officially declared November 2nd as “All Souls’ Day” in 1000 AD, which many believe was an attempt to erase the traditional festival of Samhain. However, many aspects of both traditions blended into one another, which eventually led to the celebration being called “All-Hallows-Eve,” which then evolved into “Halloween.”
Halloween in America
In the 1800s, Americans wanted to turn Halloween into a more community-based celebration instead of acknowledging its long past of pranks, spirits, and “witchcraft.” In the early 1900s, parents were urged to remove “frightening” or “grotesque” imagery from any Halloween celebrations. Through these measures, Halloween became a far more tame holiday, losing most of its superstitious and religious undertones. It actually became a holiday geared more at children than any other demographic by the 1950s.
The practice of trick-or-treating became a common practice in a community effort to prevent kids from playing pranks or vandalizing buildings around their towns. It became a tradition to give out candy or food to costumed children who knocked on the door on the evening of October 31st. As the practice became more popular and widespread around the country, the audience for Halloween expanded as well. Soon, both adults and children were dressing up, attending Halloween parties, and engaging in the kind of fun festivities that the Celts would have similarly enjoyed thousands of years before.
