History of Halloween

Halloween used to be called All Hallow’s Eve. Just like the name, time changed many things about this once religious holiday…

Parties, candy, costumes, and horror movies are how America celebrates Halloween today. In the United States and other parts of the world, Halloween has taken on a different meaning from its original conception. It was once a religious festival about celebrating the dead. Now, haunted houses and scary movies mark Halloween, leaving only small remnants of the Pagan rituals of old. Ghosts and spirits only play a small part in Halloween festivities today, instead of being at the forefront of the holiday.

Once referred to as All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween actually means hallowed evening, or holy evening. November 1 is All Hallow’s Day or Saints Day so it’s not uncommon to have an eve of celebration the night before a Christian holiday (like Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve). There are many roots that make up the holiday today but the most obvious origins are in Celtic and Pagan rituals.

Halloween used to be celebrated by having a Christian feast, much like Christmas and Easter, around the end of the Celtic harvest season. It was meant for remembering the dead, including saints (or hallows), martyrs, and loved ones. Some Christian churches still hold services for Halloween and remember the dead by hosting candle lighting services at gravesites of loved ones. Festivals would consist of divination rituals, music and dancing, fasting from meat, and special bonfires. Meat abstention is the main reason why apples, apple cider, potato cakes, and pumpkin were and still are used as Halloween and fall treats. The flames, smoke and ashes of the bonfire were said to have protective and cleansing powers to protect the living from the dead.

Marking the end of the harvest season, or the change into winter, it was believed that the veil between the living and the Otherworld was thinned so the dead could mingle among the living. This belief is where the use of costumes came from. In Scotland, children would wear masks or painted faces and go door-to-door threatening mischief, hence the trick part of trick-or-treating. There was also a festival in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales where children would go house-to-house in costumes in attempts to guise themselves from spirits they believed walked among them. The children would go to houses reciting verses or songs in exchange for food, hence the origin of the treats in trick-or-treating.

History professor Abel Alves at Ball State says that it’s not uncommon for rituals to shift like they have. “When you stop to think about, this happens all the time throughout history,” he said. “In many cultures, just like the Celtic and Scottish, these traditions lose meaning throughout time for various reasons.” When storytelling is no longer told orally, he says, “we lose the culture and the practices and the tradition that started it all.”

Maybe it’s not such a mystery where the practices of Halloween came from. As times changed, so did the trick-or-treating practices. Costumes caught up with popular culture and children and adults lost perspective of the original reasons for the holiday. There are still rituals with Halloween like pumpkin carving, eating pumpkin flavored foods, drinking apple cider, and going to apple orchards that echo the old rituals. Unfortunately, going to haunted houses and watching scary movies, which actually have nothing to do with the

original concept of All Hallow’s Eve, have taken over the traditional practices of remembering the day and celebrating a new season.

It’s unlikely that Halloween practices will go back to harvest festivals, spiritual bonfires, and graveyard séances. This is how they are now and whether we realize it, celebrating Halloween is a religious decision. It is a religious holiday and there are many who choose not to celebrate Halloween. In many cultures that have no Christianity-based practices, Halloween may be very different, if existent at all. It’s important to stop and think about why we do things and what Halloween is all about.

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