Halloween History

Halloween. Whether you love it or hate it, the holiday is impossible to escape, come the beginning of August. I was at the grocery story the other day and saw a pile of jack-o-lanterns and was floored. I guess with this crazy year I pretty much forgot that, oh yeah, we do celebrate that holiday, hmmm. Well, after having a quick existential crisis about what the holiday season for 2020 is going to look like, I was able to return to my senses.

When we think Halloween, we think costumes, candy, scary decorations, haunted houses and parties. But aside from the basic cat costumes for girls and the basketball jerseys for guys (at least these were the most seen costumes at Ohio University for Halloween 2019… don’t quote me on that) there is so much more depth and history to this widely celebrated holiday. So, I say we take a deeper look.

The Halloween holiday we know today, looked completely different about 2,000 years ago. It began with the Celtic people, who lived in what is now Ireland, the UK and parts of northern France. These ancient people celebrated their new year on November 1st, and said farewell to the summer as they welcomed in the harvest months. No more mai tais and beach getaways for the Celts, it was time for early sunsets and welcoming spirits. The day before the new year celebration, October 31st, was believed to be when the boundary between the living and dead became a bit blurry. The ghosts of past lives would return and roam with the living, so it wasn’t that surprising to see your great aunt Lucy stumbling out of an Irish pub on this night. 

During this time, priests would build huge bonfires to burn crops and sacrifice animals to the ghosts. Many people who attended these “celebrations” would wear costumes, typically animal heads and coats. In the next 400 years, the Roman Empire took over and combined their origins with the Celtic celebration. They commemorated the passing of the dead, just like the Celtic tradition, and also honored the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, which is how bobbing for apples came to be.

A couple hundred years into the future, the Pope at the time decided to expand the large festival to celebrate matyrs as well as all of the Saints. What was usually celebrated on May 13th, was now moved to November 1st, and was soon blended with the Christian holiday, All Soul’s day, celebrated on November 2nd.  So where does Halloween come into play here. Well, the All Saint’s Day celebration was also known as All-hallows, which would make October 31st, All-hallows eve, and eventually Halloween. 

But what about Americanized Halloween? What about trick-or-treating and the monster mash? What about Nightmare Before Christmas?! Halloween was more largely celebrated in the southern states at first, because of New England’s strict protestant beliefs, but they eventually came around. Colonial people would celebrate the harvest with “play parties,” where people would eat, sing, dance and share ghost stories. Autumn festivals were common, but Halloween was not popularized until immigrants from other countries flooded the U.S. The Irish were most helpful in making Halloween popular, and as a fellow irish-woman I would like to say thank you to my ancestors.

In the 1800s, Americans borrowed from european traditions, by going house to house dressed up in costumes and asking for food or money, which eventually became the modern trick-or-treating. One roadblock for the holiday was when there was a movement by community leaders and newspapers to take the “scary” or “grotesque” out of the holiday and focus on games and food. Because of this, the religious overtones of the holiday pretty much disappeared into the 1900s.

Now moving into the 20th century, we become a little more familiar with the Halloween practices. The holiday became a community based celebration, and was shown through parades and parties around town. But there are always people who try to ruin a good thing, and along with the good, clean fun came vandalism. Into the 1950s, the vandalism was mostly contained, but there were still some teens who liked to throw a few rolls of toilet paper into their neighbors' trees.

Halloween grew into a holiday that was aimed at children, with copious amounts of candy being consumed and classroom parties being all the rage. Families were also convinced that they could keep the trouble making to a minimum by handing out treats to the children.  And just like that, one of the most celebrated holidays was created and has made its mark in America forever. Raking in around $6 billion annually, Halloween continues to be full of fun, creativity and a little bit of mischief.