Written by: Mitch Galford
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which occurred 2,000 years ago. This festival was celebrated on their new year, November 1. The Celts believed that on the night of October 31, the ghosts of the dead returned to Earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, the Celts thought this made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to predict the future.
Now, how did Halloween start in America? The celebration of Halloween was severely limited in colonial New England due to the rigid Protestant belief systems prevalent there. Halloween was more widely recognized in the southern colonies, such as Maryland. Several years later, as European ethnic groups and American Indians mixed, the first Halloween celebrations began. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events to celebrate the harvest. People would tell stories of the dead, dance, and sing.
By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivals were common, but Halloween was not widely celebrated throughout the country. In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants, including millions of Irish people who escaped the Irish Potato Famine. This helped popularize the celebration of Halloween nationwide.
Now, how does this play into Halloween today? Trick-or-treating came from European traditions. Americans began to dress up in costumes and ask for food or money — a practice that would become today’s trick-or-treating. Young women believed that they could discover the name or appearance of their future husbands by doing tricks with yarn, apple peels, and mirrors.
In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to make Halloween more about community and neighborhood gatherings than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to remove anything frightening or grotesque from their Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious meanings by the beginning of the 20th century.
Trick-or-treating is also based on All Souls’ Day, an English holiday with parades. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food, and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the families’ dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits.
Costumes come from Celtic and European traditions, too. People were scared of spirits, so they wore masks after dark to avoid being recognized by them.
Halloween has been around for hundreds of years, and every year is different from the last — from ancient times to today.
