Origin of Halloween

Sep 17, 2010
Steve Boxall

Origin of Halloween - euart

This article explains the origin of Halloween and some of its traditions. It all starts over 2,000 years ago with the Celtic festival of Samhain.

On October 31 children all over will be planning what costumes to wear, dressing up and preparing to go trick or treating hoping to get as much candy as they possibly can, but have you ever thought about where Halloween came from? What is the origin of Halloween and how have the traditions that we associate with it come about?

Origins of Halloween

It is widely believed that the origin of Halloween started nearly 2,000 years ago at the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts' New Year began on November 1st. This day marked the beginning of the cold hard winter and the end of their harvesting. T

hey believed that on October 31st the world of the living and dead became distorted so they used to dress up in costumes that normally consisted of animal skins and heads so that the evil spirits could not recognise them.

Before A.D. 800 Christianity had spread throughout the Celtic lands and the church decided to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a more appropriate Christian holiday, so they chose to rename November 1st as All Saints Day. This celebration was also known as All-Hallows and October 31st then became known as All-Hallows eve.

Eventually, over 200 years later, the church would agree to honour their dead. The date they chose was November 2nd which they called All Souls Day. These three days of celebration on October 31st (All-Hallows Eve), November 1st (All-Hallows or All Saints Day) and November 2nd (All Souls Day) were called the period of Hallowmas. This eventually turned into what we call it today - Halloween.

Traditions on Halloween

There are a number of traditions on Halloween that we perform today that still originate from the ancient past:

Apple Bobbing – this seems to originate from the Roman festival of Pamona. Pamona is the Roman goddess of fruit trees and the symbol for Pamona is the apple.
Trick or Treating – probably the tradition that every child looks forward to most and looking back it seems to relate to the period in England where on All Souls Day the poor inhabitants would go door to door begging for food. The families would give these people cakes or pastries and these became known as ‘soul cakes’. Eventually just the children would go out begging, this was referred to as ‘Going Souling’.
Bonfires – During the festival of Samhain the Celts would build a bonfire, they would use wood and also throw bones onto it from the sacrificed cattle. It is believed that the word bonfire comes from these ‘bone fires’.
Jack-O-Lantern – Irish folklore tells of a story about a man called Jack that had tricked the devil so that he could not take his soul. When Jack died he found that he could not go to heaven either and was left to wander the earth’s darkness. He then carved out a turnip, put a burning ember inside and used it as a lantern to ward of the evil spirits. Today we still do this but use pumpkins instead of turnips which are far easier to carve.
Dressing Up – this started with the Celts when they dressed up in animal skins and heads on the festival of Samhain so that the evil spirits could not recognise them as humans.

So there it is, Halloween is now the second biggest celebration of the year after Christmas and it all started over 2,000 years ago with the Celtic festival of Samhain.