Halloween
Halloween, when the dead come back to roam, is a popular Irish and North American holiday.
Halloween, when the dead come back to roam, is a popular Irish and North American holiday.
Names: Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Samhain
Pronunciation: SAH-win
Halloween, when the dead come back to roam, is a popular Irish and North American holiday.
Origin
Halloween deals with the relationship between the living and the dead. Halloween grew out of the Irish holiday of Samhain. One of the four most important Celtic holidays of the year, Samhain is a harvest holiday. It is said the divisions between the worlds of the living and the dead shift during this festival. There may even be interactions between the living and the dead during this time. The Samhain harvest is the last of the year before winter, and Samhain deals with the natural cycle of death and rebirth.
When Christianity spread after the Roman conquest, the Christian church adopted many pagan holidays. The powerful, but fairly new, church wanted to build off the popularity of existing pagan holidays. This was a common practice for the Romans, who often adopted or synthesized the gods of the areas they conquered, in an attempt to keep goodwill with the colonized people.
The Christian church put its own holidays, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, in the two days following Samhain. These holidays, both of which deal with honoring the dead, were intended to reflect Samhain and gain followers based on the popularity of the established harvest festival. All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day were collectively known as All-Hallows. The church recast Samhain as All Hallow’s Eve, which eventually turned into the modern term of “Halloween.”
Halloween gained a following in the United States following a large influx of Irish immigrants in the 1800s. Halloween festivities, including costumed events, were reported in papers in the United States throughout the early to mid 1900s. Newspaper accounts also note a large number of pranks (for example, ringing doorbells and running away, also known as ding-dong ditch).
Today, Halloween is incredibly popular within the United States. Outside of Ireland, Halloween is mainly observed within North America. It is also observed in Sardinia.
Traditions
Halloween plays host to a variety of scary (and not-so-scary) traditions. The carved pumpkin known as a jack-o’-lantern is one of the images most readily associated with Halloween. It is also one of Halloween’s oldest traditions, dating back to Samhain when people carved turnips to frighten away malevolent spirits.
The wearing of costumes is also a tradition from Samhain. Originally, celebrants wore costumes to blend in with the spirits walking the earth on Samhain. Today, costumes are a billion-dollar business, with most Halloween participants donning one.
The next most notable Halloween tradition is one of murky origins. Trick-or-treating is a children’s activity where children, in costume, knock on the doors of neighbors. When the door is open, they give the traditional greeting “trick or treat” and receive candy in return. Some scholars believe this derived from “mumming,” a medieval practice where “mummers” would exchange songs or stories for food.
According to the American Journal of Play, there is no set origin to trick-or-treating, but as an American practice, it likely developed in the 1930s in the western United States. It caught on in the 1950s and 1960s, with candy companies beginning to create individually wrapped candies for the holiday.
What to do
“Happy Halloween” is a fine greeting. Although it has religious and cultural traditions, Halloween is generally perceived as a secular holiday today. This is an appropriate greeting for anyone.
For adults, costumes are still encouraged. Go all out and be the best dressed at a Halloween party. Or throw on your most frightening pajamas and curl up with a scary movie.