History of Halloween

Halloween conjures up images of jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, sweet treats, and children dressed in costumes for an evening of trick-or-treating. Across the United States an estimated 36.8 million children between the ages of 5 and 13 will participate in trick-or-treating. The United States produces 805 million pounds of pumpkins that get carved into jack-o-lanterns. Every October 31^st porches across the United States get decorated with jack-o-lanterns; windows with images of ghosts, black cats, and witches; streets are filled with children in costumes who go from door to door with open bags yelling, "trick or treat" in hopes of receiving their favorite candies and treats. Millions happily participate in Halloween traditions each year, but what are the origins of the holiday?

The Halloween we know today began in Ireland centuries before Christ. Warriors called the Celts lived throughout the British Isles and north of France. The Celts lived off of the earth and like anyone who lives off of the earth knows, nature can be both friend and foe. They were at the mercy of the elements and winter was the scariest time of all. For the early Celts, once their harvest time was in, that was it; there was no way of getting more food. When winter began to set in, the Celts would begin thinking about their own mortality. As winter started, the Celts would ask the druids, or high priests, to pray for them. The most important night of prayer occurred at the end of their fall harvest. The Celts believed that on that night, the boundary between the living world and the spirit world was unusually thin-so thin that the souls of the dead could roam freely back and forth. This night was called Samhain (pronounced "SOW-in") and was very important to the Celts. Samhain represented the transition from the summer to the winter. This transitional time was very magical to the Celts. On Samhain night only, the Celts believed that the dead could walk the earth once more. Not every visiting ghost was friendly so the Celts devised ways to appease these spirits. The Celts would travel to the edges of their villages with offerings. This would coax any evil forces away from their homes. They would leave foods and sweets outside as gifts for the dead. This tradition would eventually become trick-or-treating. This is also the origin of the fear of the dead that is associated with Halloween.

The Celts believed that the Gods controlled the sun. The shortening days were a sign of their awesome power. The Celts would build bonfires to honor the Gods and to pray for the return of the sun. To thank the earth for giving them a harvest, the Celts would offer blood sacrifices in return. Cows, horses, and other animals were thrown onto huge bonfires. The purpose of the sacrifice was to offer the earth something back for giving up her riches. The early Celts thought that in return, they must offer up some of their essentials for life (cows, horses, etc.). The sacrifice also offered the Celts clues to the future. Druids would read the burned entrails of the animals like they were tea leaves. This would allow the villagers to learn who would die and who would prosper in the coming year. Samhain night was considered the best night of all for predicting the future. The Celts needed to know if they should move, who would live, who would die, and if the leaders were going to be healthy the next year. The Celts would look into the future on Samhain night because it was the night that the spirits came alive. The prophecies that the druids read spread throughout the villages and would become stories that were told well into the night. This is thought to be one of the origins of telling ghost stories on Halloween.

There are mysterious mounds of rocks throughout Ireland. Some call them "fairy mounds". Ancient Celt tales say that it is the fairies in these mounds that roam the earth, just as trick-or-treaters roam streets today dressed as fairies and other worldly spirits. The belief in death, the belief in wandering spirits, the idea of dressing up in costumes and being allowed to perform mischief or pranks, much as supernatural creatures like fairies would-this formed much of our contemporary Halloween traditions. The Celts, their Samhain tradition, and their beliefs about the dead provided many of the ingredients for our Halloween celebrations today.

Ancient Romans had a celebration too that helped shape our current Halloween. The night was called Pomona. The Romans worshipped Pomona, the goddess of gardens and fruits in a festival that took place around November 1^st. To thank Pomona for a bountiful harvest, Romans laid out apples and nuts in tribute. Apple bobbing comes from this Pomona tradition.

In 50 B.C., the Romans conquered much of Northern Europe. This spread Pomona to the land of Samhain and the two traditions began to merge with traditions of honoring both the dead and the harvest. Just as the two merged, another force, one that is bitterly opposed to Pagan beliefs, Christianity, began to take hold across Europe. Samhain would soon find itself in a war waged on moral battleground.

At the dawn of the 1^st millennium the world was dominated by Pagans; people, who like the Celts, worshipped natural spirits. They were not part of any formal religion. These pagans collided with a powerful movement on rise around the world, one that would try to conquer anything non-Christian in its path.

In the first century there existed a strong Christian conviction. The Christians believed that all other forces of the universe that were worshipped were demonic beings. They considered them hostile beings if they were opposed to God. Early Christians attacked the Pagan world. These missionaries recognized that the Celtic people had supernatural experience, but they thought that if the Celts believed in other Gods and goddesses, then that must be the work of the devil. The Christians felt that the devil must be deceiving these people.

The Pagan emperor of Rome, Constantine, said that he had an image of Christ appear before him while on the battlefield. He converted to Christianity, paving the way for its rise everywhere. In 325, Constantine summoned the Counsel of Nicea, which created the Christian doctrine and inspired thousands of Christian missionaries to go out and save Pagan souls across Europe. The missionaries quickly found that steering the public away from Pagan beliefs would not be easy. The cultural traditions were so deep; they could not just be wiped out. The Christians tried to baptize the Pagans to turn them and give them a Christian twist, which would sanctify them in some way.

The first concrete plan was laid in around the year 600 by Pope Gregory I. He recognized that Christianity was still a young movement struggling to gain acceptance. He knew he would never persuade the Pagans to end their ways and take up Christianity all in one step. He believed that if Christians came across people worshipping a tree, that the tree should not be cut down. Instead, the tree should be consecrated in the name of Christ and allow the people to keep worshipping as they had been. Still, old ways persisted and the church's success was mixed. The Pagans were still not interested in Christianity because the idea of waiting until the next life to have a good life was not a popular idea. So the Christians had to make Christianity more attractive to the Celts. They grafted on the practices of the new religion onto the old religion.

By the 8^th century, the church had enough of trying to accommodate the Pagans. Pope Gregory III decided to challenge Pagan beliefs by turning their most important holiday, Samhain, into a day of the church. November 1^st was claimed as All Saints Day, a day to honor those Christian saints who did not already have a day of their own. All Saints Day is also known as All Hallow's Day. Hallow is equivalent to saint. It was the eve of All Hallow's (October 31^st) which became known as All Hallow's Evening. Through a corruption of the word evening, we got the word Halloween.

The church had taken the first step in absorbing Samhain. There were still many Pagans who carried on the old beliefs and practices anyway. People continued to dress in straw costumes, continued putting out food offerings for souls, continued doing the customs they knew, but under the name of Halloween rather than under the name of Samhain.

In the 10^th century, the church took its campaign one step further. The church decided November 2^nd to be All Soul's Day, a day to remember everyone, saints or not, who had died in the last year. It was a direct appropriation of Samhain, but it would take even more than that to loosen the grip of age old traditions.

The practice that concerned the church the most was witchcraft. Witches were a symbol to the church as the very worst of Paganism, especially at Samhain time. The word witch comes from Old English meaning wicca, or wise one, and usually refers to a woman. Witches were long seen by the church as unruly feminine powers who tapped into the darkest aspects of Halloween.

In the 1400's church zealots hunted witches down. The punishments were cruel. The presence of these powerful women were troubling to the Christian community and particularly troubling to the clergy. Witches were portrayed as gruesome, violent hags who were the devil's maidens and were bent on evil and destruction.

In 1486, Pope Innocent VIII published a book claiming the link between witches and the devil. He then outlawed the Pagan Celtic religion altogether, in large part because of its links to witches. The witches upset their male chauvinist universe that was comprised of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost-no women. Women were not welcome in the hierarchy and witches posed a threat to that. Witches were put on trial all over Europe. Those found guilty were hanged or burned alive. In 1431 the witch hunts swept across Europe and claimed French heroine Joan of Arc. Even she was found guilty of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

The idea of the witch as the embodiment of evil was so powerful that even animals associated with witches took on a demonic reputation. The black cats we decorate Halloween with today came from a belief that the cat, nocturnal by nature, was a witch's spirit, but in animal form.

The mysterious bat, a familiar Halloween creature, also has its origins in ancient Samhain ways. When they had the bonfires, mosquitoes were attracted to the fires and bats to the mosquitoes, so bats could be seen flying over the bonfires. This is how bats became associated with Halloween.

Throughout its long history, every culture that celebrates Halloween has stamped it with its own local flavor. Mexico celebrates The Day of the Dead, an ancient festival on All Soul's Day that combines Pagan and Christian elements. The Mexican church does not demonize the dead spirits, but instead encourages celebrations for them. Families hold picnics and tell stories at the gravesites of loved ones. Images of skeletons in the form of candies and bread are common. It is a synthesis of pre-existing Indian traditions with Spanish-Catholic influence. Mexico's Day of the Dead celebration is an example of how Halloween had adapted over time, changing its shape to fit local beliefs. Day of the Dead has roots going all the way back to the Middle Ages.

Halloween would make its biggest adaptation in 1517 just as the church was starting to splinter. As the holy revolution to conquer Paganism was reaching its peak, the church itself would soon be torn forever. By the early 16^th century, the Catholic Church was undergoing enormous changes. On Halloween in 1517, Christian revolutionary Martin Luther posted his famous thesis attacking church dogma. By launching the Protestant Reformation, Luther changed the face of Christianity and Halloween forever. He rejected all of the symbols that stood between worshippers and God, including popes, priests, and saints. So when saints went out of favor so did All Saints Day, and of course, All Hallow's Eve. However, the holiday was too popular to go away completely.

In England, the Protestants would use Halloween to further their battle with the Catholics. On November 5, 1605 a Catholic militant named Guy Fawkes was arrested for trying to blow up the Protestant dominated House of Lords. Ever since then Guy Fawkes Night has been a popular English holiday celebrated with firecrackers and bonfire parties. Since the date was so close to Halloween, and some of the customs were similar, the two would blend over time and are often celebrated together. The custom that has evolved over centuries in England is for children to make effigies of Guy Fawkes and then those effigies are burned on a bonfire. The children spend several weeks prior to November 5^th with their dummies and ask people for a penny for the Guy. It is a begging tradition not unlike trick-or-treating.

Elsewhere, Catholic and Protestant differences would also determine how people spent Halloween. In England's colony, America, the Puritans who settled in New England were bitterly opposed to Halloween. They considered the holiday too Pagan and too Catholic. The Protestants were rebels because they broke away from the Church of England because they believed it was too Catholic. They left England for this reason so they didn't want to carry anything with them that had to do with Catholicism and Halloween was something that had to do with Catholicism.

In 1692, Puritan obsession came to a bloody climax in the notorious Salem Witchcraft Trials. Dozens of people were accused of witchcraft. In the end twenty people were killed, nineteen by hanging and one was crushed to death by rocks.

While Puritans waged a virtual holy war on Paganism not all of the American colonies were so hostile. In Virginia, with a large Catholic and Anglican population the holiday thrived. Virginia became the birthplace of American Halloween. Halloween parties featuring ghost stories and bobbing for apples became popular in Virginia and in other Southern colonies. All of the colonies believed in witchcraft, magic and the occult. Magic was a part of life. Magic is the element that was needed for Halloween to take root again. It is the belief that there is a spirit world.

Some of the most popular Halloween games involve divination, especially predicting one's future, and particularly one's romantic prospects. For example, women would look for the face of their future husbands to appear in foods cooked in a fire. In another popular divination game, a young girl would leave a wet blouse out to dry overnight. While she slept the man should would marry would come and turn one of the sleeves on the blouse, or so the superstition went. Divination games were a large part of Halloween parties, also called play parties, which were very popular in the early 1800's. Play parties had many of the same elements that we recognize in Halloween parties today. There were nuts and apples, carved pumpkins, community gatherings and ghost stories.

Halloween got its biggest boost when an enormous wave of Irish immigrants began coming to America. The Irish breathed new life into Halloween practices that had already taken hold in America. The Irish would gather into each other's homes and play fortune-telling games and tell ghost stories. These parties that the Irish had on Halloween became widely popular.

This was a time of great change in America. The country was in the throes of the Industrial Age. Millions were flocking from the countryside into the cities and the rustic values of the Irish new-comers seemed to hearken back to a simpler, easier time. They carried with them nostalgia for the old country that became the hallmark of Irish American life. Irish traditions became seen as something that came from a Golden Age or Eden, a paradise.

When some longtime Irish Halloween customs did not fit in to the new American life, they were adapted. For example, the American pumpkin proved much easier to carve into Jack-o-lanterns than the turnip used in Ireland. Carving a scary face into the harmless pumpkin typifies the way prudish Northern America tried to tame Halloween, turning its dark sides into lighthearted fun.

By the end of the 19^th century, evil deeds that were thought about the holiday were nearly gone. It was replaced by a holiday that was not just for adults, but one the whole family could take part in. By the dawn of the 20^th century, children would overtake Halloween and make it their own.

World War I broke out in 1914. Thousands of Americans were lost in battle. In the process the country lost its innocence. America was growing up and the ancient traditions of Halloween had to grow up with it. People were now more practical and educated. Newspapers stopped being filled solely with recipes and entertainment and instead became filled with real subjects and substance. Instead of giving up Halloween, adults dressed up the children and sent them to parties. Stay-at-home Halloween parties for adults were fading away and events for kids took prominence. This took Halloween out of the home and into the neighborhood. With children let loose in the streets came a resurgence of the dark side of the holiday: pranks and vandalism. In the 1930's in Queens, New York, for example, young vandals smashed 1,000 windows on Halloween night. The pranks even turned deadly. A Halloween prank caused the deaths of two policemen. Halloween was out of control and communities had to find a way to rein it in.

In the 1920's the little town of Anoka, Minnesota addressed the problem head-on by hosting the country's first big civic Halloween parade. The goal was clear: tame the children. This would rein in the chaos on Halloween by thwarting vandalism. This didn't squelch Halloween mischief altogether. Pranks, such as building collages of junk and placing them on neighbor's rooftops, were among the vandals' favorite tricks. Still, the rest of the country began to follow Anoka's example. Popular culture began to embrace the Halloween craze that was sweeping across America, all the way to Hollywood.

In the early 1940's the World War II broke out. Americans were not in a festive mood. Resources were scarce. Costume parties and giving candy were frowned upon. Kids instead collected scrap metal for the war effort. In many cities Halloween activities were canceled.

After the war, Halloween events for kids came roaring back, but there was the same concern about safety and vandalism. Radio stations would give prizes; kids would enter their names at community parties and if they were home within 30 minutes of the parties' end, they might win a prize. The radio stations would start making calls 30 minutes after the community parties were over. This encouraged kids to go straight home after the Halloween parties.

America was prosperous like never before after the war. The surge of well-being brought about a surge in buying and a baby boom. This new generation embraced Halloween. Costume parties and trick-or-treating became favorite Halloween pastimes. Organized trick-or-treating and community Halloween parties helped subdue Halloween's more mischievous side.

However, by the 1970's and 1980's, roving groups of teens in Detroit, Michigan began to set fires, thousands of them, in a Halloween-inspired orgy of arson. People in Detroit feared for their lives and their homes. Meanwhile, the whole country was starting to fear for the kids. In the 1970's, rumors began to circulate about children dying from razorblades and poisons being put in trick-or-treat candy. Parents panicked. X-raying candy became a common occurrence on Halloween night. There were razorblades found in some apples, but they did not cause any deaths. As for poisoned Halloween candy, some children did die from it, but investigators drew the same shocking conclusion from each case. Those children were poisoned not by strangers, but by members of their own families. Trick-or-treating is about trust. It is strangers opening their doors to strangers. There is much more trust in the tradition of trick-or-treating in our culture now.

Fear has always guided Halloween night, but what the ancient Celts feared were other worldly spirits. Currently, what we are usually afraid of is each other. The terror has worsened by what popular culture has done with Halloween. Movies like "Halloween" have spun many knock-offs and have portrayed Halloween as a night of evil-doing, a night where death is in the air. Hollywood has forever made Halloween a night dripping in ghosts and gore, from the creepy to the comical.

By taming Halloween we have turned this night of Celtic fear into fun. This age old celebration of earthly chaos will probably never be stopped altogether. Americans spend over $2 billion on Halloween, making it the second biggest commercial holiday behind Christmas. 3000 years ago the ancient Celts introduced us to a night when the dead roamed the earth, the night of Halloween. The world of those Celts lies in ruins today, but the Pagan beliefs they help spread live on today.