As Halloween is vastly approaching us I feel as though it is extremely important to be educated on the history of this holiday that has become so commercialized. Most people don’t know of the deep Celtic history behind the holiday. What once was a celebration of the end of harvest and a day believed where the dead could return is now about cheap costumes, candy, and an excuse to party. And even after the American commercialization of the holiday, Halloween as an American celebration has changed so much over the past 100 years.
The tradition of Halloween was believed to have started as a Celtic celebration called Samhain. This day for the Celts represented the end of their summer and harvest season and the beginning of their winter season. They believed that on October 31st the veil between the moral world and the afterlife was weak which allowed the dead to come back as what they believed to be ghosts. Due to the Celts believing that ghosts and evil spirits could return on this day they began to build large sacrificial bonfires where the Celts would burn crops and animals to their Celtic deities. During these bonfires they would wear costumes made from animal skin and heads in order to protect themselves from the evil spirits. Over time this Celtic celebration changed due to the influence and spread of Christianity, eventually the holiday was turned into All Saints Day and was celebrated on November 2nd in order to be considered an approved holiday by the christian church. This new version of the Celtic holiday was also referred to as All-Hallows and All-hallows Eve and eventually was called Halloween. By the time of the early 1900’s many Irish immigrants began fleeing their hometowns for America due to the potato famine which was starving and killing roughly a million people.
Halloween began to change once it was brought to America, the first change being the addition of trick or treating. Originally trick or treating was used in Ireland and Scotland and was called guising. Children would go to their neighbors houses and do small performances in order to be rewarded with food, or money. In 1911 in Ontario Canada there was the first report of children going trick or treating in costume in the Americas. Eventually the phrase trick or treat would be added to the tradition in 1917. Eventually spreading all over and becoming the common phrase for children on Halloween.
Costumes have been a part of the holiday since before it was even known as Halloween. Originally costumes were believed to ward off evil ghosts who had crossed over into the mortal world, but now costumes are seen as a chance to dress up and forget who you are for one night. In the late 1800s to the early 1900s most Halloween costumes were extremely typical “spooky” Halloween creatures such as a black cat, ghost, witch, or even a mummy. But during the 1930s once Hollywood began to take off and media became more focused on things such as movies, TV shows, and comic books, those Halloween costumes slowly shifted away from classic parts of Halloween to whatever character the child most liked that year. At the beginning of these years most costumes were also homemade, most of the time being out of cheap fabrics, and even paper costumes at one point. But over time as Halloween became more commercialized, costumes began to fade away and costume shops began to pop up just like the ones we go to today.
Halloween as we know it today is vastly different from the sacred Celtic practice it once was. And as the holiday has become more commercialized and built for consumers we as a society have slowly forgotten the true history behind Halloween. So this Halloween I hope you think about the history behind the holiday you are celebrating. And maybe bring back some of the old traditions of Samhain.
