A dark, cloudy night. Kids running around, going from door to door. Candy piling up, costumes flourishing. It seems so familiar, the same every year. But it didn’t always look like this.
Halloween is actually nothing like what it was originally intended to be. It starts with the Celtic people of present-day Ireland. Some 2,000 years ago, they created the holiday Samhain. Samhain, pronounced Sam-an, marked the point between the fall equinox and the winter solstice.
The Celtic people believed that during this time, evil spirits could morph between the living and the dead world, according to The History Channel. To protect themselves, the Celts would dress up as monsters or animals. This is where we got Halloween costumes from. Of course, our costumes today look drastically different from the Celts’ costumes.
During the seventh century, Christianity started to reach the Celts. Due to this, the holiday, “All Saints Day,” was established. The celebration of this day was also referred to as “All Hallows Eve,” which is where we got “Halloween” from.
Even though this explains where we got costumes and the name for Halloween, a lot is left unfinished. So how did we get from ancient Celts protecting themselves to knocking door to door for candy in the creative spread of costumes we see today?
During the Middle Ages, people from England and Ireland who were poor would go to the wealthy houses around them. They did this on All Hallows Eve, dressed up in their costumes. They would get pastries called soul cakes; this act was then referred to as “souling.” As the years went on, children started going from door to door in their costumes. They would receive things like food, money, or ale. Although this is thought to be the earliest form of Trick-or-Treating, there are a couple of theories on the origins of Trick-or-Treating. No one’s really sure which one was the one that stuck.
Library of Congress Blogs reports that one theory suggests that the German-American tradition, where children would call their neighbors and see if the neighbors could guess what they were dressed up as. If no one could guess the costumes, then they got food or candy.
While the people of Europe were celebrating All Hallows Eve, America was strictly against the Catholic holiday, with Maryland being the only Catholic dominated state. America didn’t start celebrating and partaking in All Hallows Eve until the nineteenth century, when immigrants, most of whom were Irish escaping the potato famine, brought these foreign ideas to America.
Since then, American consumerism has drastically morphed the holiday, but we still see the parallels between our Halloween and the Celts’ Samhain.
