Halloween

It was a beautiful autumn night. I was walking home from work and heard a noise. What was that? Just evening noise.

Was that a ghost I just saw? A witch? Are my eyes deceiving me? A goblin! Frankenstein! Dracula!

"Trick or Treat!"

I relaxed. Halloween.

I remember trick or treating when I was a young child. There was one house on my street that everyone was afraid to go into. An elderly lady lived there by herself. For some reason we thought that she was a witch.

In hindsight I'm sure she was a nice lady. Nobody in the neighborhood knew anything about her, even the adults. If they did, nobody said anything. I guess Halloween magnified that which we knew little about.

Maybe that nice lady, the one nobody knew much about, was an unintentional symbol for this holiday. She represented a fear within our minds. We gave her a superstitious biography.

How did this holiday start? I did a bit of Internet surfing and this is want I learned.

The name Halloween refers to the Christian holiday, All Saints Day (November 1st ), also known as All Hallows Day. The word hallow means holy. Halloween is a corruption of the words Hallows Eve. It is interesting to note that the holiday starts the evening before. This is in homage to the Eastern Orthodox church that uses a lunar calendar (based on the cycles of the moon) as do the Jewish, Chinese, and other calendars of other cultures.

All Saints Day honors saints, those that have done good deeds. How does this relate to goblins, witches, and monsters?

Our journey begins in Europe. Ireland and the fascinating Celtic culture is the birthplace of the Halloween holiday. October 31st was the last day of summer for the Celtics.

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain,

Samhain is the word for November in the Irish language. . . the first three nights of this month, the festival marking the ending of the summer season. Elements of the festival may continue in the traditions of All Souls' Day and Halloween.

The Celtics, as were and are many cultures, were superstitious. They believed that the spirits of those that died in the previous year look for a new body to inhabit on Halloween. From wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm.

One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

This belief was shared by other cultures. From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween,

Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when the spiritual world can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent. . .

Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the púca, a mischievous spirit.

How did trick or treating become part of the holiday? The costumes? Candy?

There are different stories that discuss the reasons for costumes. They are all related to scaring the spirits seeking new bodies. The costumes and noise were meant to scare the spirits away. One didn't want to lose their body to a spirit! From wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm,

They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

From www.history.com/minisites/halloween/viewPage?pageId=713,

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

Halloween was a communal holiday, one celebrated with the whole community. They gathered together and created one large bonfire. Being with others provided protection from the roaming spirits.

Remember this holiday is also the Celtic New Year. Just about all holidays are celebrated with food. The Celtics incorporated food into this gathering.

Halloween came to the United States during the 1800's when the Irish emigrated to the United States. Initially, America celebrated Halloween more as an ethnic holiday. It was celebrated by both the newly emigrated Irish-Americans and the Scottish-Americans. From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween,

When the holiday was observed in 19th-century America, it was generally in three ways. Scottish-American and Irish-American societies held dinners and balls that celebrated their heritages, with perhaps a recitation of Robert Burns' poem "Hallowe'en" or a telling of Irish legends, much as Columbus Day celebrations were more about Italian-American heritage than Columbus. Home parties would center around children's activities, such as bobbing for apples and various divination games, particularly about future romance. And finally, pranks and mischief were common on Hallowe'en.

Trick or treating is believed to have evolved from an interesting custom. It is based on a mixture of religion, superstition, and commercialism. Because people feared that a spirit might take their soul, an enterprising group of people traveled from household to household promising to pray for that household's dead relatives. From wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm,

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.

Halloween has evolved from its Celtic origins. The premise is similar though. Today, Halloween is a fun holiday; we know that the recently dead cannot come back to life to steal our souls. However, we dress up in outer-worldly and ghoulish costumes. We trick or treat although we mostly prefer candy instead of soul cakes. For me, Halloween acts as the introduction to the winter holiday season of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukkah, and New Years.

Next time you say "trick or treat" or hand out candy, remember you are continuing a long and varied tradition. And I think about that lady that lived up the street from me. I often wish I got to know her. I'm sure she was a very nice lady.