The Origins of Halloween
Halloween is easily my favorite holiday. For kids, it’s all about finding the coolest costume your folks will buy you, heading out after dark and trying to get as much candy as possible so you can stuff your face afterwards. However, Halloween isn’t just a holiday for children. For some adults, Halloween is all about getting dressed up in some absurd costume and doing whatever it takes to have a good time, even if it means making an absolute fool of themselves in the process. Me, for example. Others like to get dressed up in a “sexy” costume and go out looking like a prostitute. Whatever floats you boat, right?
Even though we all, well, most of us, celebrate Halloween from year 1, we have no idea why it’s celebrated or where the holiday came from. Well, flyer readers, have I got a scoop for you. I spent hours minutes doing a ton little research and have the answer. Enjoy.
2,000 years ago, in the area that is now Ireland, the UK and Northern France, the Celts would celebrate their new year on November 1st. The Celt new year marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, a time that was often associated with death. The night before the new year, October 31st, they celebrated Samhain. It was believed that during this time, the spirits of the dead returned to earth, making trouble and damaging crops. While these ghosts were around, the Druids and Celtic priests believed it was much easier to make predictions about the future. Sacrifices of slaughtered animals and crops were made to appease the spirits. The sacrifices were thrown into a large bonfire and left to burn.
During the celebration, Celts wore costumes. Now, they weren’t sexy Freddy Kreuger, sexy fat bastard or cool Ghostbusters uniforms like we see today. They typically wore animal heads and skins and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. Kinda gross, but I guess you’ve gotta use what you’ve got. I mean, I highly doubt that they could just run over to Samhain Express and pick up a costume.
No word on whether or not the Celts got snockered on mead and held dance parties. They probably did, though.
Fast forward a couple of thousand years to A.D. 43. By this time, those crazy Romans had conquered the overwhelming majority of Celtic territory. They ruled those lands for about 400 years. During this period of time, two Roman festivals were combined with the Celtic celebration of Samhain to form a hybrid of sorts. The first Roman festival that was combined with Samhain, Feralia, was a day in late October in which the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead. The second fesival was a day that honored the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, Pomona. In fact, the symbol of Pomona is the apple and many believe that bobbing for apples, a tradition that some still practice on Halloween, stems directly from this.
Let’s fast forward one more time to the 800’s. At this point, Christianity has spread all over the Celtic lands. In order to replace the Celtic/Roman festival of the dead with a church-approved holiday, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1st as All Saints’ Day in which saints and martyrs were honored. All-Saints’ Day was also referred to as All-Hallows or All-Hallowmas, which comes from the Middle English word, Alholowmesse, meaning All Saint’s day. And, on the night before this holiday many celebrated All-Hallows Eve, which was eventually modified and pronounced Halloween. Halloween was celebrated in much the same way as Samhain, with costumes, bonfires, parades and such.
Now, I’m not sure how trick-or-treating and sexy costumes came into play further on down the road, but at least you’ve got the background on how Halloween came to be. Pretty neat stuff.
Anyway, I hope you all have fun tonight. Be safe and make sure to give kids the good candy. Don’t be the cheapskate that hands out cheap/gross candy. No one likes the orange and black wrapped taffy. No one. Stick with the candy bars, lollipops, mini-skittles bags, etc…
For more info on the origin of Halloween, check History.com and Wikipedia.
