Halloween's long history and traditions
Halloween is an annual holiday, celebrated every year on October 31. Halloween has its roots in age-old European traditions. It originates with the Celtic festival of Samhain when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. In the 700’s, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some Samhain traditions. The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve, later named Halloween. Through the years, Halloween has evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving. Around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to fill these days with themed social gatherings, costumes, and sweet treats. Samhain (pronounced as sow-in) is a celebration that dates back to when the Celts lived in an area that is now Ireland, northern France, and the United Kingdom. The Celts celebrated their independence day on November 1. This day marked the end of the summer and harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter which was often associated with human death. The Celts believed that on the night before the new year the lines between the worlds of the dead and living became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to the world of the living. To commemorate the event, Druids (or Celtic priests) would build huge, sacred bonfires, where people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifice to the Celtic deities. The Celts would wear costumes, typically made of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. The celebration of Halloween in the colonies of New England was extremely limited because of the rigid Protestant beliefs. Halloween was much more common in the southern colonies. A distinct American Halloween arose when European and Native American Indian ethnic groups’ beliefs and customs meshed together. The first celebrations included “play parties,” events to celebrate the harvest, and neighbors shared stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortune, dance and sing. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivals were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century, immigrants flooded into America; these new immigrants, especially the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween across the nation.
