The History of Halloween

Thursday, June 2, 2022

2학년 7반 김신영

1. Introduction

Halloween is a holiday celebrated every year on October 31st. The tradition

originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light
bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts and spirits. Over time, Halloween
evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns,
decorating your porch with scary props, donning costumes, and eating treats
instead of the traditional bonfire and ghost-warding. Today, Halloween is a day
for people of all ages to dress up as fictional characters and eat candies at parties.
Or, it might just be a day to sit around the couch, watching a Halloween movie
flick on the TV. Animals traditionally associated with Halloween are specifically
black cats, bats, wolves, and spiders.

2. Origins of Halloween

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The
Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, in the area that is now Ireland, the UK, and
northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1st. This day marked
the end of summer and the crop harvest, and the beginning of the dark, cold
winter– a time of year that was often associated with death. The Celts believed
that on the night before the new year, October 31st, the line between the worlds of
the living and the dead became blurred. They celebrated Samhain on that night
when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to
generally causing trouble and damaging crops, the Celts thought that the
presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic
priests, to make predictions about the future. For people entirely dependent on
the natural, living world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort
during the long, harsh winter. To commemorate the event, the Druids built huge
sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as
sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes,
typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s
fortunes. This ancient costume-wearing tradition was probably how the act of
donning costumes today became a popular thing.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In
the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of
Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
The first was a celebration called Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans
commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona,
the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. Pomona’s symbol is the apple, and the
incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of
bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic
lands and Celtic culture, where it gradually blended with Celtic rites. In 1000
A.D., the church made November 2nd All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s
widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival
of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls’ Day was
celebrated similarly to Samhain– with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up as
saints, angels, and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called
All-hallows or All-hallowmas and the night before it began to be called
All-Hallows Eve and eventually, Halloween.

3. Halloween Comes into America and the US

A distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge when

different beliefs of European ethnic groups and American indigenous groups
began to mesh. The first celebrations included public events held to celebrate the
harvest. Neighbors would tell each other’s fortunes, dance, and sing, and dine
together. These ‘colonial Halloween’ festivities also featured the telling of ghost
stories and mischievous pranking. By the middle of the 19th century, Halloween
was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country. In the second half of the 19th
century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants,
especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to
popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

4. Trick or Treating & Halloween Parties

4-1. History of Trick or Treating

By the ninth century, Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it
gradually blended with and supplanted older pagan rites. People on the lower end
of the social hierarchy would visit the houses of wealthier families and receive
pastries called ‘soul cakes’ in exchange for a promise to pray for the souls of the
homeowners’ dead relatives. Known as ‘souling,’ the practice was later taken up
by children, who would go from door to door asking for gifts such as food, money,
and ale.
In Scotland and Ireland, young people took part in a tradition called ‘guising’, or
dressing up in costume and accepting offerings from various households. Rather
than pledging to pray for the dead, they would sing a song, recite a poem, tell a
joke or perform another sort of ‘trick’ before collecting their treat, which typically
consisted of fruit, nuts, or coins.

With Halloween mischief often devolving into vandalism, physical assaults, and
acts of violence, The Great Depression(1929) only exacerbated the problem. One
theory suggests that excessive pranks on Halloween led to the widespread
adoption of an organized, community-based trick-or-treating tradition in the
1930s. This trend was abruptly curtailed, however, with the outbreak of World
War II, when sugar rationing meant there were fewer treats to hand out. But at
the height of the postwar baby boom, trick-or-treating reclaimed its place among
other Halloween customs. It quickly became standard practice for millions of
children in America’s cities. No longer constrained by sugar rationing, candy
companies capitalized on launching national advertising campaigns specifically
aimed at Halloween.
4-2. Halloween Parties
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but
community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as
the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and
communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many
communities during this time. By the 1950s, mayors and town leaders had
successfully limited vandalism, thus letting Halloween evolve into a holiday
directed mainly at the young. Due to high numbers of young children during the
fifties’ baby boom, parties moved from town centers into the classroom or at
home, where they could be more easily accommodated.

5. Halloween in Pop Culture– Costumes, Candy, Movies, Books

5-1. Costumes

Halloween costumes back then were more geared toward spooky themes
(as opposed to current events), and mostly homemade. The goal wasn’t
necessarily to dress up as a particular creature or character, but rather to conceal
one’s identity in a spooky way with themes like ghosts, witches, black cats, and
the moon.

After the Great Depression in the 1920s, hundreds of teenagers would

wreak havoc across the country; flipping over cars and stripping power lines,
even stealing dead bodies. Concerned adults started organizing activities like
trick-or-treating and haunted houses; thankfully, this helped calm down the mass
amounts of violence in the streets. This also meant a change in the ‘traditional’
costumes that were worn by young children. As Halloween became more centered
on keeping children entertained, costumes also changed into being less ‘spooky’
and more ‘fun’. In the 1950s, mass-produced box costumes became more
affordable, so more kids began to use them to dress up as princesses, mummies,
clowns, or more specific characters like Batman and Frankenstein’s monster.
There were cowboy costumes, and there were also the type of “Indian costumes”
that the indigenous found offensive (and still find offensive).
5-2. Candy

With candy and the tradition of trick-or-treating being popularized in the

mid-19th century, it’s no surprise that candy companies have seen a massive
increase in sales, especially around the time of Halloween. With Americans
spending an estimated $2.6 billion on candy on Halloween, this, and the day
itself, has become the nation’s second-largest commercial holiday. The most
popular candies I’ve received over my Halloween days consist of Reese’s Peanut
Butter Cups, Airheads, Jolly Ranchers, Coffee Crisps, Kitkats, Twizzlers, and
Skittles, and finally, Mars bars taking the crown in being first place. Other
popular candies to hand out include the iconic candy corn, as well as caramel
apples or toothbrushes.

5-3. Movies

Classic Halloween movies include the ‘Halloween’ franchise, based on the

1978 original film directed by John Carpenter. In ‘Halloween,’ a young boy
named Michael Myers murders his 17-year-old sister and is committed to jail,
only to escape as a teen on Halloween night and seek out his old home, and a new
target. A direct sequel to the original ‘Halloween’ was released in 2018, and a
sequel to that—’Halloween Kills,’ the twelfth film in the ‘Halloween’ franchise
overall—was released in 2021.

Considered a classic horror film, ‘Halloween’ inspired other iconic ‘slasher films’
like ‘Scream,’ ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Friday the 13th.’ More
family-friendly Halloween movies include ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ and
‘Beetlejuice’.

5.4- Books

Books based around Halloween, or books that have been turned into classic
Halloween horror flicks didn’t receive as much popularity as other
Halloween-related media, such as songs or dances. However, some iconic books
such as Steven King’s ‘The Shining’ or Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein’ still remain
widely popular during the month of October. Other notable books include
‘Coraline’, ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Hyde’, and ‘Dracula’.
6. Outro

Halloween has certainly come a very long way over the years.
Starting off as a Celtic tradition to ward off ghosts and otherworldly spirits,
and now becoming a national holiday for children to take home free candy
and frolic around, donning costumes and a trick-or-treat bucket.
Halloween still remains a very iconic holiday in my heart full of good
memories. It was my favorite holiday back when I was at the ripe age of 6,
and it’s still my favorite holiday today, although I don’t celebrate it in the
traditional sense. I doubt the fundamentals of Halloween will change very
much in the next decade or two, nor do I think it will become any less
popular. Kids will be kids, and even in a few years, they’ll still be excited to
dress up as Spiderman and collect a pillowcase’s worth of candy in less
than 2 hours. Bobbing for apples and participating in cheesy party games,
such as Pin the Tail on the Werewolf, still holds a special place in my heart,
all thanks to Halloween.