Halloween is an annual celebration where kids and adults alike can dress up, carve pumpkins and gorge themselves on candy. Pretty sweet, right?
While lots of us revel in the traditions of today – candy, costumes, ghost stories and haunted houses – few of us know the history of one of the best days of the year.
Halloween is linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain – a name derived from Old Irish that means roughly, ‘summers end.’ The Samhain Festival celebrated the end of the ‘lighter half’ of the year, and the beginning of the ‘darker half’ and is sometimes regarded as the Celtic New Year.
At this time, the ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the next was at its smallest, allowing spirits – both harmless and harmful – to pass through. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks, as people tried to disguise themselves as the bad spirits in order to avoid harm.
The practice of trick-or-treating began in the Middle Ages, when the poor would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1) and ask for food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). Though this originated in Britain and Ireland, similar practices were noted as far south as Italy.
Minnesota was the first U.S. State to officially celebrate Halloween, recognizing the holiday in 1921. Other states quickly followed and adopted the traditions of pumpkin carving, costumes, ghost stories and trick-or-treating.
Share your Halloween traditions in the comments below! And to learn more about the history of Halloween, visit Wikipedia.
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