JOSH RANNEY
News Editor
Halloween: when little kids go out dressed creepy or cool . . . and adults usually dress up as something clever, or inappropriate. Nothing in between.
Americans spend billions on candy, decorations and costumes. Classic horror movies are all over the TV.
But the holiday of haunts at the end of October are the result of years and years of tradition and ritual.
Halloween is known to a lesser degree by the name, All Hallows’ Eve. All Hallows’ Eve goes back farther than most people probably realize: around 2,000 years.
All Hallows’ Eve has roots going back to a Celtic festival called Samhain which was held at the end of October and beginning of November to celebrate the end of summer.
Samhain was a time when people would assemble in their villages to gather the crops that had been harvested and would take them through the winter.
The haunts of the holiday can be traced back to this largely agriculture based holiday, too.
According to folklorist John Santino, it was a day that the deceased would “cross over” from
the mortal world to the “other” world.
However, historians have challenged the idea that the beginnings of Halloween as it related to supernatural beings are as firmly based off of Samhain. Professor Nicholas Rogers from York University in Toronto has said, “There is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or ancestor worship.”
He said the rituals practiced in the celebration of Samhain were more about the changing of the seasons; preparation for winter and conclusion of summer, than they were about “death or evil.”
Rogers suggests that since All Saints’ Day, otherwise known as All Hallows’ Mass, is celebrated on Nov. 1, and Samhain is the day before, their correlation is simply based on the coincidence of them being so close on the calendar.
Through the years, these two holidays have combined, as have cultures, eventually resulting in the Holiday we now know as Halloween.
When it comes to trick-or-treating, Santino says this may have developed from a very real practice.
A popular possibility is that trick-or-treating came from the act of “guising.” When people would go door to door in disguises to ask for food.
Another theory comes from the British isles where the poor and hungry would go door to door throughout the cities to ask for food in exchange for prayers for their dead.
Santino said trick-or-treating as we know it didn’t begin in the United States until the 1940s, during WWII.
Now, although “tricking” doesn’t really happen much these days, except for a handful of unruly teens who will probably toilet paper a house, engaging in pranks was a big part of the holiday over the years.
In 19th century America and Canada, hooligans would often do things like tip over outhouses, open farmers’ gates and let animals out, or egg houses. The latter of which hasn’t completely died off.
But by the 1920s and 30s, the pranks grew to the point of getting out of control. It was more of an “unruly block party, and acts of vandalism got more serious,” said Santino.
Less destructive games now associated with Halloween began around that time too. Bobbing for apples started to grow in popularity.
According to legend, the first person to grab an apple from a tub of water using their mouth, not their hands, would be the first to marry.
A weirder apple-marriage game also began. Apparently, a woman would peel an apple into one long piece of apple skin. She would then toss it over her shoulder, and the skin would supposedly land in the shape of the first letter of her would-be husband’s name.
As Halloween has grown, it has also grown to be more common to see evangelical Christians claim that Halloween is a Satanic holiday.
Samhain, though, did not at any point celebrate anything resembling devilish or evil acts. Furthermore, ancient Celts were celebrating Samhain long before the Christian church was formally organized.
Santino said the association of Samhain, or Halloween, with Satanism or evil is about as meritorious as a black cat symbolizing witchcraft.
Black cats are just a superstitious bad luck charm at all times of the year.
Because of Halloween’s roots in Ireland, it came to the United States with Irish immigrants during the immigration boom of late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the U.S., in the decades since the first Irish immigrants brought the tradition over, Halloween has grown into a full blown holiday.
Now, cities, towns and villages officially set times when children can trick-or-treat. Major television networks play classic Halloween and horror movies. Schools have embraced the holiday.
The intense commercialization of and obsession with Halloween in America, is in some cases, downright annoying to other countries.
French, Australian and Dutch societies have looked at American fixation on Halloween and rolled their eyes. Americans spend billions of dollars on all things spooky and sweet.
After Christmas, Halloween is the second most commercialized holiday.
Halloween is so woven into the American culture now, with such a huge economic impact, the third color associated with Halloween along with orange and black might have to be green.
The Halloween boom has blown up so much that it’s easy to forget it’s ancient roots in Irish agriculture and childish shenanigans.