Halloween has roots in Celtic and Roman pagan celebrations of the dead and the end of summer. The Church later created All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day to replace these holidays. Halloween customs like costumes, candy, and Jack-o-lanterns evolved over time.
Many cultures and religions have contributed to the holiday we now know as Halloween. Early such celebrations allowed Celtic and Roman pagans to honor their dead ancestors, make peace with bad luck, and prepare for the dormant winter season. When Europe was Christianized, these feasts were set aside by the Church to honor the saints and the deceased. Finally, waves of immigrants from Ireland and Scotland brought to America traditions that coalesced in the mid-1900s like the mischief, customs, and sweets we know today.
The Celts celebrated the end of summer with New Year’s Eve around the autumnal equinox on November 1st. These were ancient people, living around AD 0, in present-day Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The impending bleakness of winter meant that the festival was at its climax between life and death. On this occasion, the druids believed that the line between the dead and the living was malleable. The night before, October 31, they celebrated Samhain to honor those ancestors returning to the realm of the living. Thus, while the common people celebrated in costume as sacred animals and danced around the bonfires, the druids conducted divinations to predict the future.
In the same era, the pagan Romans celebrated a similar festival to celebrate the dead, called Feralia. Instead of focusing on winter, this was a harvest time, filled with ripe fruit and plentiful food from the goddess Pomona. From this, we borrow our apple dance and the cornucopias associated with Halloween. As Christianity spread to Europe, the church had to convert these pagan holidays into days of worship. So they created All Saints’ Day to fall on November 1 to replace the holidays associated with death. When this was ineffective at fully converting everyone, around 1000 AD the church declared November 2 as All Souls’ Day so that people could recognize their deceased.
The name Halloween derives from All Saints and the Dead. In Middle English, All Saints’ Day translates as Alholowmesse, which has been handed down as All Hallow’s Evening and abbreviated as Hallowmas or Hallowe’en.
Other customs associated with Halloween have been adapted recently. The children’s general sense of mischief arose as parents could easily blame the visiting “ghosts” for the night. Collecting candy and sweets from neighbors was originally a way to collect offerings for the Day of the Dead. A Jack-o-lantern was a carved turnip with a candle inside that was placed in windows to ward off evil spirits. Irish history has it that the miserly and sinful Jack makes the devil promise that he will not be taken to hell. Jack has to go back to the devil when he is rejected by heaven. The Devil gives him a burning brand to place in a carved turnip to light his way as a wandering soul. Pumpkins, because they are a gourd and not a root, are easier to carve, so Irish immigrants to America preferred them over turnips.
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