origin of halloween essay

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Halloween 2024

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 31, 2024 | Original: November 18, 2009

Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31, and Halloween 2024 will occur on Thursday, October 31. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain , when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve, and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, donning costumes and eating treats.

When Is Halloween 2024?

Halloween is celebrated each year on October 31. Halloween 2024 will take place on Thursday, October 31.

Ancient History of Halloween

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts , who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. 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.

Did you know? One quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween.

By A.D. 43, the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

All Saints' Day

On May 13, A.D. 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In A.D. 1000, the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils . The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

How Did Halloween Start in America?

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

Did you know? More people are buying costumes for their pets. Americans spent nearly $500 million on costumes for their pets in 2021—more than double what they spent in 2010.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants . These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine , helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

Gallery: White House Halloweens

History of Trick-or-Treating

Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft . At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes.

Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Halloween Parties

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.

By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated.

Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats.

Thus, a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday after Christmas .

Halloween Movies

Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movies have a long history of being box office hits. Classic Halloween movies include the “Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young boy named Michael Myers murders his 17-year-old sister and is committed to jail, only to escape as a teen on Halloween night and seek out his old home, and a new target. A direct sequel to the original "Halloween" was released in 2018, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle. A sequel to that, "Halloween Kills," was released in 2021; and a sequel to that, "Halloween Ends," was released in 2022.

Considered a classic horror film down to its spooky soundtrack, "Halloween" inspired other iconic “slasher films” like “Scream,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13.” More family-friendly Halloween movies include “Hocus Pocus,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Beetlejuice” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” 

All Souls Day and Soul Cakes

The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-souling,” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry.

On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.

On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

Gallery: Halloween Costumes Through the Ages

Black Cats and Ghosts on Halloween

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats , afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages , when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into black cats.

We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians , who believed that triangles were sacred (it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe). And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

Halloween Matchmaking and Lesser-Known Rituals

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead.

In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it.

In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.)

Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband.

Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry. At others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we’re asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the goodwill of the very same “spirits” whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.

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The Origins of Halloween Traditions

October 26, 2021

Posted by: Heather Thomas

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Carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and wearing scary costumes are some of the time-honored traditions of Halloween. Yet, the Halloween holiday has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “SAH-win”), a pagan religious celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor saints. Soon after, All Saints Day came to incorporate some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before All Saints Day was known as All Hallows Eve , and later, Halloween. Here is a look at the origins of some of the classic Halloween traditions we know today.

Carving Jack-o’-Lanterns

The tradition of carving Jack-o’-Lanterns originated in Ireland using turnips instead of pumpkins. It is allegedly based on a legend about a man named Stingy Jack who repeatedly trapped the Devil and only let him go on the condition that Jack would never go to Hell. But when Jack died, he learned that Heaven did not want his soul either, so he was forced to wander the Earth as a ghost for eternity. The Devil gave Jack a burning lump of coal in a carved-out turnip to light his way. Locals eventually began carving scary faces into their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits.

Seeing Ghosts

The festival of Samhain marked the transition to the new year at the end of the harvest and beginning of the winter. Celtic people believed that during the festival, spirits walked the Earth. Later on, Christian missionaries introduced All Souls’ Day on November 2, which perpetuated the idea of the living coming into contact with the dead around the same time of year. 

In order to avoid being terrorized by all the evil spirits walking the Earth during Samhain, the Celts donned disguises in order to confuse the spirits and be left alone. 

Trick-or-Treating 

There is much debate around the origins of trick-or-treating, but generally there are three theories. The first theory suggests that during Samhain, Celtic people would leave food out to appease the spirits traveling the Earth at night . Over time, people began to dress as these unearthly beings in exchange for similar offerings of food and drink. 

The second theory speculates that the candy boon stems from the Scottish practice of guising, which is a secular version of “souling.” During the Middle Ages, generally children and poor adults would collect food and money from local homes in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls’ Day . Guisers dropped the prayers in favor of non-religious practices with the inclusion of songs, jokes, and other “tricks.”

A third theory argues that modern American trick-or-treating stems from “ belsnickeling ,” a German-American Christmas tradition where children would dress in costume and then call on their neighbors to see if the adults could guess the identities of the disguised. In one version of the practice, the children were rewarded with food or other treats if no one could identify them.

The idea of being spooked by black cats dates back to the Middle Ages, when these dark felines were considered a symbol of the Devil. It didn’t help that centuries later, accused witches were often found to have cats, particularly black ones. People began to believe that the cats were a witch’s “familiar” –supernatural entities that would assist in their practice of dark magic–and black cats and spookiness have been linked ever since. 

Black and Orange

The traditional Halloween colors of black and orange also traces back to the Celtic festival of Samhain. For the Celts, black represented the “death” of summer while the orange symbolized the autumn harvest season. 

Bobbing for Apples

The game of bobbing for apples has been a staple at Halloween parties for many years, but its origins are more rooted in love and romance. The game traces back to a courting ritual that was part of a Roman festival honoring Pomona , the goddess of agriculture and abundance. While multiple versions existed, the gist was that young men and women would be able to predict their future relationships based on the game. When the Romans conquered the British Isles in 43 AD, the Pomona festival blended with the similarly timed Samhain, a precursor to Halloween.

Playing pranks often varies by region, but the pre-Halloween tradition known as “ Devil’s Night ,” is credited to a different origin depending on the source. Some say that pranks started as part of May Day celebrations. But Samhain, and eventually All Souls Day, also included good-natured mischief. When Irish and Scottish immigrants came to America, they brought with them the tradition of celebrating Mischief Night as part of Halloween.

Lighting Candles and Bonfires

For much of the early history of Halloween, towering bonfires were used to light the way for souls seeking the afterlife. These days, lighting candles have generally replaced the large traditional blazes. 

Candy Apples

For centuries, people have been coating fruit in syrup as a means of preservation. But during the Roman festival of Pomona, the goddess was often represented by and associated with apples ; her name derives from the Latin word for apple “pomum” and the fruit is at the heart of harvest celebrations. It is believed that candy apples were invented accidentally in 1908 by William W. Kolb, a candymaker in Newark, New Jersey. As the story goes, Kolb was experimenting with red cinnamon candy to sell at Christmastime and he dipped apples on sticks into the red glaze and put them in his shop window to showcase his new candy. But instead of selling the candies, he ended up selling the apples to customers who thought they looked good enough to eat. They became fashionable treats for Halloween starting in the early 1900s and they remained popular up until the 1970s.

Bats were likely present at the earliest proto-Halloween celebrations, not just symbolically but literally. As part of Samhain, Celts lit large bonfires, which attracted insects, which in turn, attracted bats. Soon spotting bats became connected with the festival. Medieval folklore expanded upon the eeriness of bats with a number of superstitions built around the belief that bats were harbingers of death. 

Devouring Candy

The act of going door-to-door for handouts has long been a part of Halloween revelries. But until the mid-20th century, the “treats” children received were not necessarily candy. Things like fruit, nuts, coins, and toys were just as likely to be given out. Trick-or-treating rose in popularity in the 1950s and it inspired candy companies to market small, individually wrapped candies. People began to favor the confections out of convenience, but candy did not dominate at the exclusion of all other treats until the 1970s when parents started fearing anything unwrapped.

A candymaker at the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia is sometimes credited with inventing the tri-colored candy in the 1880s. But candy corn did not become a widespread sensation until the Goelitz Company brought the candy to the masses in 1898. Candy corn was originally called “Chicken Feed” and it sold in boxes with the slogan “Something worth crowing for.” Initially, it was just an autumnal candy because of corn’s association with harvest time. Candy corn later became Halloween-specific when trick-or-treating grew in popularity in the U.S. during the 1950s. 

What are some other Halloween traditions that you enjoy? Share them in the comments.

Discover more:

• Search Chronicling America * to find more historical newspaper coverage of Halloween traditions and more!
• Use this Halloween topics page as a guide to help you with search strategies and links to related articles in Chronicling America.
• Look through this research guide on Halloween and Día de Muertos resources found at the Library of Congress created by the American Folklife Center. * The Chronicling America historic newspapers online collection is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities .

Comments (49)

Well thats pretty neat and such

càng thêm các mục kinh dị nữa nhé hay quá

I can’t wait anymore for Halloween.

The Romans did not conquer all of the British Isles. The couldn’t defeat Caledonia (now Scotland) and built 2 walls to keep us out.

As an older adult, I most enjoy that post Halloween (which is the pinnacle of scary costumes, purposeful spookiness, acceptable door to door begging (with the unwritten rule that if the homeowner lacks good treats – the children can toilet paper the house or light a flaming bag of dog poo, and ring the bell with no recourse, but be seen as “having done the right thing for the suckers that are too selfish”) – that what follows post Halloween are the holidays of inviting everyone to the table to enjoy a meal and great conversation as we share in the abundance of harvest and togetherness – and then requiring children to show us how good they “can” be as we determine what their end of year reward(s) for having done so might be. It’s a bizarre series of events.

why thay have wich is in Halloween movie and trik trik

Celebrations like Halloween are in conflict with Bible teachings. The Bible warns: “There must never be anyone among you who . . . practices divination, who is soothsayer, augur or sorcerer, who uses charms, consults ghosts or spirits, or calls up the dead.”—Deuteronomy 18:10, 11, The Jerusalem Bible; see also Leviticus 19:31; Galatians 5:19-21. In view of the foregoing, it is wise for you to know about the dark origins of Halloween and similar celebrations. Having this fuller understanding may move you to join many others who do not participate in these holidays.

I RLLY ENJOYED THIS TYSM FOR SHARING IT

Not a mention of this in Kansas..?

https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/halloween/12078

Thank you so much. All most interesting. Cheers.

Candied Apples are still in style.

I think it’s everything so beaautiful.

this was very very helpful im writing a essay for school and this helped alot 5 stars out of 5 stars thanks alot for this

It’s always good to research and also be educated on topics . I don’t celebrate Halloween, but still enjoy seeing children dressed in sweet costumes. So sad those who have taken the joy out of a child’s pastime event.

i needed this for a project and got a 100 thx

i thought it was cool how it started of craving pumpkins

Article is very confuseing

Grace, Age 15

wow i lean so much from this

This article is amazing, couldn’t have read anything better in 6th block.

Halloween has been a long-time mystery that I’ve wanted to figure out. I think it’s very attractive on paper as well as literally. I think it’s one of the more obscure holidays in terms of endearment and the way it presents itself. It is so eerie but brings much joy, which is very contrasting. Overall, I do believe it’s a very enigmatic but purposeful event.

Wonderful Information

Wow 30 cents for candy my son would be die

Wonderful information

Being Irish , it drives me nuts that Americans have high-Jacked our Halloween tradition well ours and the Scots..only joking it is funny though …we original used Turnips not Pumpkins, Pumpkins are so much easy to carve. The kids dress up in scary costumes and go house to house in search of sweets (candy) but we don’t do trick or treat.We do bobbing for apples & also we also duck for money in a basin of water. Finally , we make a special cake its a spiced tea bracket called a Barm Brack. You normally put money in it and a ring.Halloween wasn’t very popular in the UK when I was young but now its huge thanks to the US. Cheers

Just an observation as I am looking in to this to understand the origin for personal research purposes. For the “seeing ghosts” subheading it says that christians are the ones who introduced “All Souls Day” however the link provided shows a news paper article labeled “The Catholic Times.” Just wanted to point that out as some would argue that though fundamentally they have the same belief, their traditions and culture are quite different.

TLDR: It was the Catholics, not the Christians who included “All Souls Day” in the picture. I just like things to be specific.

Why do people think Halloween is Satanic. This is not true at all.

I want halloween already

add something about salem and there witch trials

i like pumpkins

Zoie, that is a totally different subject.

Jeff M, Halloween does not go against what is written in the Bible. There may be some religions or groups that conjure, worship dark spirits, etc, etc. That is totally different than what Halloween is. Please re-read article for a better understanding.

Why didn’t you mention that the druids on All Hallows Eve sacrificed children and black cats in the bonfire to the God of the Dead

Joe, Catholics are Christians…

Except ancient pagan Celts had been destroyed by the Romans in the 1st c. AD and All Saints Day was originally on May 13 and had nothing whatever to do with Samhain. See https://aquinasonline.com/2021/10/27/is-halloween-a-pagan-festival/

do this festival bring bad luck to people’s homes.?

Bonfires are still very much a part of holloween in Ireland so much so firefighters are not allowed to take holidays on this day and it is generally their busiest day of the year .

I think this article was well done. Very helpful for understanding the origins of many Halloween traditions. This is a great resource for explaining Halloween’s roots to those who claim that celebrating it is sinful. I’m a Christian from a Christian home and we’ve always celebrated Halloween, and that does not make us “evil” or “false” or “misguided”. It’s the presentation of the holiday that has been manipulated by sin, not the holiday itself. God has warned us to guard our hearts and told us to show Christ in all we do, so we can still celebrate Halloween joyfully as long as we’re being wise and mindful. The evil is in devil worship and pagan systems, not in thrilling decorations and dressing up and trick-or-treating and staying out late. There are many believers who condemn their fellow Christians for celebrating Halloween and this is so wrong! Some of them find Halloween sinful merely because they don’t really know its history, which is why articles like this are incredibly helpful! (Also, of course, alongside evidence from the Bible!) The traditions of Halloween vary in different places in the world, but as long as you stay away from anything that’s satanic or willfully harmful to others, you can celebrate Halloween in whatever way you’re most comfortable! If you still choose not to celebrate, that’s okay! Just know that you have the freedom to celebrate if you want to, and that it’s not okay to bash on others who do make that choice! Thanks again for this article. I hope anyone who reads it will learn something new! I also hope that anyone who reads this comment will feel encouraged or enlightened by what I wanted to share! Super excited to celebrate Halloween and I pray for safety and joy for everyone who’s going to be trick-or-treating this year! :)

now I love Halloween what are you for Halloween?

I LOVE HALLOWEEN ITS SO SPOOKY

hap hallween every1

I used to love to dress up in a scary costume and go out Trick or Treating on Halloween night with my pillow case and get lots of candy

very nice I feel well informed

If you add All Souls’ Day , all saints Day, contacting the Dead, Ghost and Goblins, Witch’s and superstitions about Black Cats, Tricks and Treats which one has to be very careful about the treats nowadays, you surely don’t have anything good about Halloween, so as a Born Again Believer in JESUS CHRIST I will not participate in Halloween or any other holiday connected to Satan and Satanic activities. Fall Festival’s, Trunk and Treat, along with other things the so called Church has on Halloween, I don’t participate in either. Have you time with evil and I’ll try my best to follow the HOLY WORD OF GOD AND THE LEADERSHIP AND GUIDANCE OF GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT.

All the free candy Getting to be a character Making your own costumes The darkness of the night Craftiness of my company Getting to be out with your friends Looking at house decorations Going for a walk in the neighborhoods

Celebrating halloween shouldn’t be allowed, who else thinks so? There to much drug candy these days.

I think this relates to Ancient Rome because they both have something to do with religous thoughts. Like they created a day to “scare” away the ghost that came back to earth to visit.

Enjoyable to read! Fun history! I read somewhere that on Oct 31, the “veil” between heaven & earth, or the living & the dead is lifted & spirits of the dead are allowed, on that one night, to roam the earth.

Awesome article.

I love the pictures of the kids in costume.

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From Samhain to Halloween

Exploring the Celtic origins of everyone’s favorite harvest holiday celebrating thresholds between life and death.

Two of Halloween’s most representative images are the pumpkin and the ghost, symbols of harvest and death. The folklorist Jack Santino explains the origins of the holiday celebrating thresholds between life and death, and good and evil.

Our Halloween traditions are largely traceable to the Celtic day of Samhain, which marked the start of the new year. Santino writes that most of what we know about Samhain comes from Irish sagas written between the ninth and twelfth centuries, hundreds of years after Celtic traditions had begun to incorporate Christian ones. Nonetheless, he writes, the sagas come from longstanding oral traditions and probably reflect a great deal of the pre-Christian practices.

As the first day of winter, Samhain was the time when wood had been gathered for the hearth, winter wheat was in the ground, and farmers brought their cows and sheep from distant pastures to nearby fields or barns. As nights grew longer and vegetation died off, the sagas represented doors opening between the lands of the living and the dead.

In one saga, the Second Book of Invasions, supernatural beings called Fomorians demand harvest fruits from the people at Samhain. In another, the hero Nera goes begging from door to door on Samhain, while “demons would appear on that night always.” According to Santino, the connection between these stories and modern trick-or-treating is clear. He also points to longstanding folk practices of giving food and drink to costumed paraders representing wandering spirits that must be appeased.

Christians associated the Celtic supernatural phenomena with evil, defining fairies as fallen angels (devils) and branding followers of the old religion as witches ( followers of the devil ). But in folk belief, these magical traditions remained morally ambiguous.

The original Jack-o’-Lantern, for example, was a blacksmith named Jack who was too evil to go to heaven when he died. But Jack outwitted the devil and was barred from hell too, leaving him to wander the earth, lighting his way with a vegetable he had filled with glowing coal.

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Like poor Jack, fairies in some European stories are excluded from both heaven and hell, having followed Lucifer in rebellion but then changed their minds. Santino writes that fairies may steal away children on Halloween, but they may also rescue humans ensnared by witches’ spells.

Halloween in the U.S. was shaped by America’s own harvest season, early European settlers’ well-known fear of witches , and Celtic-inflected customs brought by nineteenth-century Irish immigrants. Even if our daily lives have little connection to agricultural seasons, we often celebrate Halloween by decorating our homes with gourds and corn. We carve pumpkins into the image of Jack-o’-Lantern, even if we don’t know his story. We dress as witches and spirits and other creatures like mummies and zombies that cross the threshold between life and death. And we invite our children to break the usual rules , demanding candy from strangers and threatening mischief—a playful, secular exploration of the territory between good and evil.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

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• HISTORY & CULTURE

The history of trick-or-treating, and how it became a Halloween tradition

Children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door for treats is a relatively modern tradition—but its origins can be traced to the Celts and even a long-lost Christmas tradition.

Every year on October 31, adults listen for the sound of a knock on their door from costumed children, arms outstretched with a bag open for candy. In modern times, trick-or-treating has become a nearly sacred Halloween tradition in the United States.

Yet historians say the origins of kids begging their neighbors for food may date back to ancient Celtic celebrations or even a long-lost Christmas custom. And the phrase itself dates back to the 1920s, when Halloween pranks once set entire cities on edge. Here’s how trick-or-treating evolved.

The origin of Halloween

Halloween is thought to date back more than 2,000 years to Samhain, a Celtic New Year’s Day that fell on November 1. Demons, fairies, and spirits of the dead were thought to walk the Earth the night before when the separation was thin between the worlds of the living and the dead .  

The Celts lit bonfires and set out gifts of food, hoping to win the favor of the spirits of those who had died in the past year. They also disguised themselves so the spirits of the dead wouldn’t recognize them.

Samhain later transformed in the seventh century into All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day as Christian leaders co-opted pagan holidays. But the night before continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades under the new name All Hallows' Eve—later "Halloween."

European immigrants then brought Halloween to the United States, and the celebration became popular in the 1800s, when Irish American immigration exploded. Their folk customs and beliefs merged with existing agricultural traditions, meaning Halloween dabbled in the occult, but stayed grounded in the fall harvest. Over the years, the holiday became a time for children to dress up as the ghosts their ancestors once feared.

( Read more about the holiday’s history and myths .)

How trick-or-treating became a tradition

But how did those Celtic traditions evolve into one of children trick-or-treating in costumes for fun and candy—not for safety from spirits?  

According to the fifth edition of Holiday Symbols and Customs, in as early as the 16th century, it was customary in England for those who were poor to go begging on All Souls’ Day , and children eventually took over the custom. At the time, it was popular to give children cakes with crosses on top called “soul cakes” in exchange for prayers on your behalf.

Lisa Morton, author of Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, traced one of the earliest mentions of typical Halloween celebrations to a letter from Queen Victoria about spending Halloween around a bonfire in Scotland in 1869.  

“Having made the circuit of the Castle,” the letter said , “the remainder of the torches were thrown in a pile at the south-west corner, thus forming a large bonfire, which was speedily augmented with other combustibles until it formed a burning mass of huge proportions, round which dancing was spiritedly carried on.”

Morton writes that people in the American middle class often were anxious to imitate their British cousins, which would explain a short story printed in 1870 that painted Halloween as an English holiday celebrated by children with fortune-telling and games to win treats.  

However, Morton writes that it’s possible that trick-or-treating may be a more recent tradition that, surprisingly, may have been inspired by Christmas.  

A popular 18th- and 19th-century Christmas custom called belsnickling in the eastern areas of the U.S. and Canada was similar to trick-or-treating: Groups of costumed participants would go from house to house to perform small tricks in exchange for food and drink. Some belsnicklers even deliberately frightened young children at houses before asking if they had been good enough to earn a treat. And other early descriptions say that those handing out treats had to guess the identities of the disguised revelers, giving food to anyone they couldn’t identify.

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In the 19th century, “tricks”—such as   rattling windows and tying doors shut —were often made to look as though supernatural forces had conjured them. Some people offered candy as a way to protect their homes from pranksters, who might wreak havoc by disassembling farm equipment and reassembling it on a rooftop. By the early 20th century, some property owners had even begun to fight back and lawmakers encouraged communities   to keep children in check with wholesome fun.

These pranks likely gave rise to the use of the phrase “trick-or-treat.” Barry Popik, an etymologist, traced the earliest usage of the phrase in connection with Halloween to a 1927 Alberta newspaper article reporting on pranksters demanding “trick or treat” at houses.

How trick-or-treating grew popular

Trick-or-treating became widespread in the U.S. after the Second World War, when rationing ended and candy was once again readily available. The rapid development of suburban neighborhoods where it was easier than ever for kids to travel from house to house also fueled the rise of the tradition.  

In the 1950s, Halloween imagery and merchandising started to reflect that popularity, and the holiday became more consumerist. Costumes went from simple, homemade attire mimicking ghosts and pirates to mass-produced costumes of beloved TV and movie characters.

As trick-or-treating’s popularity rose, adults found it far easier to hand out individually wrapped candies than apples, nuts, and homemade goodies. Candy had first made its appearance in the 1800s at American Halloween parties as taffy that children could pull, and candy is now solidified as the go-to “treat.”  

By the mid 20th century, Halloween tricks of old had all but disappeared. Children just wanted candy and homeowners with their house lights on gave it to them. Those that preferred to avoid candy-giving entirely kept their lights off.

But even as Halloween became a wholesome family activity, urban myths arose in the 1960s   that generated concern about whether it was really all that safe for kids to take candy from strangers. It’s difficult to trace the origins of urban myths like razor blades in apples or candy laced with drugs—although, i n 1964, a New York housewife made headlines after deeming some trick-or-treaters too old and handing them packages of dog biscuits, poisonous ant bait, and steel wool.  

That incident gave rise to educational programs telling children to throw away unwrapped treats, and a shift toward commercial wrapped candy, earning an incidental win for candy manufacturers .

Halloween’s candy boom

Since the rise of trick-or-treating after World War II, chocolate has reigned supreme as the most popular sweet to hand out. By 2009, Halloween had become the top U.S. holiday for chocolate sales, and that number keeps on growing.

The day has become the nation’s second-largest commercial holiday, and this year, Americans are expected to spend an estimated $3 billion on Halloween candy, according to the National Retail Federation . A good portion of that money is spent on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which national distributor Candy Store says is America’s most beloved Halloween candy.

Candy corn, first manufactured in the 1880s, also remains a classic—even though it consistently ranks as America’s least favorite Halloween treat. About 35 million pounds of the orange, yellow, and white cone-shaped candy is produced each year with the majority sold for Halloween, according to the National Confectioners Association .

Candy sales took a dip in 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions forced trick-or-treaters indoors. But now, two years later, American children have once again taken to the streets to exhort their neighbors for sweets—and maybe even play some lighthearted pranks—much like the Celts and the belsnicklers that came before them.

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Essay on Halloween Festival

Students are often asked to write an essay on Halloween Festival in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Halloween Festival

Introduction.

Halloween is a popular festival celebrated on October 31st. Its roots trace back to ancient Celtic traditions, marking the end of harvest season.

Significance

People celebrate Halloween by dressing in costumes, carving pumpkins, and trick-or-treating. Children go door-to-door asking for treats.

Halloween is a unique festival that cherishes the mystical and the fun. It brings communities together through shared traditions and celebrations.

250 Words Essay on Halloween Festival

Origins of halloween, evolution of traditions.

As Christianity spread, Samhain was morphed into All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day. The transformation included the adoption of new customs such as soul-caking, where the poor would receive food in return for prayers for the dead. Over time, this practice evolved into trick-or-treating, a popular Halloween tradition today.

Halloween in Contemporary Society

Modern Halloween celebrations are a blend of these ancient rituals and commercial influences. Costumes, once worn to ward off evil spirits, now serve as a medium for self-expression and entertainment. Jack-o’-lanterns, originally carved from turnips in Ireland, are a popular symbol, with pumpkins now commonly used in North America.

Cultural Significance

Halloween provides a unique cultural lens, reflecting societal changes and influences over centuries. It serves as a testament to the power of tradition and the enduring human fascination with the supernatural. Moreover, it underscores the importance of community and shared experiences, as seen in communal activities such as trick-or-treating and costume parties.

In conclusion, Halloween is more than just a night of costumes and candy. It’s a historical and cultural phenomenon that continues to evolve, offering insights into our past and present, and perhaps, our future.

500 Words Essay on Halloween Festival

Introduction to halloween.

Halloween, also known as All Hallows’ Eve, is a festival celebrated annually on the 31st of October. Its roots are traced back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest season and the onset of winter. The Celts believed that on this night, the boundary between the living and the dead was blurred, allowing spirits to roam the earth. Today, Halloween has evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o’-lanterns, festive gatherings, and wearing costumes.

Cultural Significance and Evolution

The evolution of Halloween is also a testament to cultural exchange and adaptation. Immigrants, particularly those from Ireland and Scotland, brought Halloween to North America in the 19th century. It gradually gained popularity and morphed into a community-centered holiday, characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. By the 20th century, Halloween had become commercialized and secular, with traditions like costume parties and themed decorations becoming commonplace.

Symbolism and Iconography

Halloween’s iconography is rich and varied, drawing from its historical roots and contemporary practices. The jack-o’-lantern, a carved pumpkin with a lit candle inside, is one of the most recognizable symbols of Halloween. It originates from an Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack who tricked the devil and was denied entry to both heaven and hell, forced to wander the earth with only a carved turnip to light his way.

Costumes, another integral part of Halloween, offer a form of self-expression and escapism. They range from traditional horror figures like witches, ghosts, and vampires, to pop culture characters, reflecting societal changes and trends. The act of dressing up is a form of performative play, allowing individuals to explore different identities and roles.

Halloween in Modern Society

However, Halloween is not without controversy. Some criticize its commercialization, arguing that it detracts from the festival’s historical and cultural roots. Others express concern about safety issues related to trick-or-treating and the consumption of excessive amounts of candy.

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The origins of halloween essay sample, example.

Like Christmas, New Year’s Day, Ramadan, or Yom Kippur, Halloween is celebrated almost in every country, even if the celebration implies only external attributes, such as pumpkins, costumes, and children asking for candy. Though the initial meaning of Halloween had much to do with occult powers, spirits, and protection against evil forces, today it is more of a merry holiday, a little bit spooky, but still enjoyed both by adults and children. So, what are the origins of Halloween?

Historically, the word Halloween is a contraction of the phrase “All Hallows Even,” which meant the day before All Hallows Day (more known as All Saints’ Day) (About.com). It was a Catholic holiday dedicated to the commemoration of saints and martyrs for faith; today, though, we know it more as a holiday of trick-or-treating, scary costumes, and funny pranks. Gradually, Halloween has lost its religious connotations, and has turned into a holiday gladly celebrated by youth and adults across the western world on October 31.

Though it is considered that Halloween has its origins in the early Middle Ages, some scientists think it is even more ancient. Peter Tokofsky, an assistant professor in the department of folklore and mythology of UCLA, believes Halloween as we know it today arose from the Celtic festival Samhain (Albany.edu). Samhain was demarcating the end of summer; on this day, souls of the dead were believed to be penetrating the real world. This was also the Celtic New Year, and druids used to celebrate it with a great fire festival, to ‘support’ the dimming Sun and not to let it vanish.

It was believed during Samhain that the living were entertaining the dead; on that night, spirits were looking for a body to possess for the entire incoming year. To avoid such a destiny, people would dress up like evil spirits themselves; scary masks or masks of animals were used to mimic these spirits and deceive them, thus avoiding being possessed. Most likely, this rite has given the start to the modern tradition to wear costumes of ghosts and witches on Halloween.

Later, Samhain was influenced by Roman and Christian cultures after Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs (History.com). Halloween gradually started to gain its modern features and characteristics. Though Halloween today is seen more as an American holiday, it was transported to North America by Irish immigrants in the middle 1800s (About.com). There it became, to a significant extent, commercialized and popularized, and its religious background has been almost forgotten; at the same time, back on the lands where Samhain originated, even in 19th century, people were afraid to walk outside after nightfall.

Along with Christmas, the New Year’s Day, and other grand holidays, Halloween is one of the most ancient and mysterious festivals, which has its origins in long forgotten pagan beliefs and rituals. As it happened to the majority of these holidays, Halloween’s religious connotations are today known by few; nowadays, it is celebrated more for fun. But, despite this, an attentive and curious researcher will easily trace the spirit of hoary rites and customs in modern trick-or-treating, cosplay, and symbols.

Emery, David. “A Quick Guide to the Origin & History of Halloween.” About.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. <http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/halloween/a/History-Of-Halloween.htm>

“The Origins of Halloween.” Albany.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. <http://www.albany.edu/~dp1252/isp523/halloween.html>

“Halloween.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. <http://www.history.com/topics/halloween>

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Halloween History

Where do our favorite Halloween traditions come from?

• Anchor Standards L.3
• Grade 6 L.6.3
• Grade 7 L.7.3
• Grade 8 L.8.3
• Grades 6, 7, 8 2b, 10c, 10d (ix)
• Lesson Plan

Presentation View

Read the blurbs below. On your own document, determine which word is correct in each bolded word pair.

There or Their?

Use there to refer to a place or to the existence of something: “I keep my shoes over there” or “There were many dogs at the park.” Use their to show that something belongs to someone: “The students are proud of their project.”

Jack-o’-Lanterns

Is there/their anything more symbolic of Halloween than carving pumpkins? The tradition likely comes from Ireland. Centuries ago, people there/their carved scary faces into hollowed-out turnips or potatoes and placed candles or pieces of burning coal inside. They set there/their glowing vegetables in windows to scare off wandering spirits.

In the 1800s, Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, where people began using pumpkins instead—probably because they are easier to carve.

Dressing Up

Every Halloween, we put on vampire teeth, superhero capes, wacky wigs, and other fun costumes. Where did this tradition originate? Thousands of years ago, Celtic warriors believed that on October 31, the boundary between the living and the dead disappeared. They wore costumes made of animal skins and animal heads to protect themselves from any spirits that happened to cross there/their paths.

Thankfully, we don’t wear animal heads anymore. But we do love to dress up. What do you think the most popular costumes will be this year?

As the story goes, a candymaker in Philadelphia named George Renninger invented candy corn in the 1880s. A few years later, the Goelitz Confectionery Company—now the Jelly Belly Candy Company—started producing candy corn and helped make it popular. At the time, many of America’s workers were farmers, and candies in the shapes of various vegetables were popular. Fun fact: Candy corn used to be called “chicken feed” because corn was (and still is) fed to chickens.

Today, 9 billion pieces of candy corn are produced each year. That’s more candy pieces than there/their are people on Earth!

This activity was originally published in the October 2020 issue.

Close Reading, Critical Thinking, Skill Building

1. introduce and practice grammar skill.

• As a class, read Grammar’s HINT to introduce or review the commonly confused words addressed in the feature. Then read the annotations, which model the correct usage.
• Have students practice the grammar skill by completing the activity as a class, in groups, or individually. In the activity, students choose which of the commonly confused words to use at several points within three short boxes of text.

2. REINFORCE SKILL

• Use the “There or Their?” activity (available in your Resources tab ).
• Have students observe the commonly confused words in context by searching for examples of their use in the magazine or in other reading material.

EDITOR’S TIP

Challenge students to come up with their own “there/their” sentences. Have them trade their sentences with a partner. What words do your students confuse? We’d love your suggestions for future grammar activities.

E-mail us at  [email protected] .

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How Halloween Has Traveled the Globe

Wendy Fonarow arrived in Mexico City late in October 2017, eager to observe the nation’s Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead. Celebrations for this holiday—also called Día de los Muertos—start on the evening of October 31 and in fact span several days during which people celebrate lost loved ones. On November 1, they memorialize children, and on the second, adults.

In many regions of Latin America, families prepare ofrendas , or altars, dedicated to the deceased and replete with food and mementos. Fonarow, an anthropologist at Glendale Community College in California, anticipated visiting such shrines, viewing graves bedecked with marigolds and candles, and tasting classic sugar skulls. What she didn’t expect to find was Halloween.

In fact, her friends in Mexico City were eager to show her a local home famous for its Halloween decorations. A handful of tombstones festooned the yard; skeletons and a ghost or two lurked among jack-o’-lanterns and cornstalks. “It just looked like a typical, not over-the-top American suburban decoration,” Fonarow recalls. This kind of decoration, while still unusual in the city, made it clear that Halloween had arrived in the capital.

Then she traveled to the state of Michoacán, famed for its traditional Día de Muertos festivities. Upon her arrival, on October 31, she saw costumed children toting apple-sized jack-o’-lantern baskets. Fonarow rushed into a candy store to procure sweets, but most people just gave pesos. No matter what they received, the kids begged for more with the phrase “ tan peque ño ”—“so little.”

This import and fusion of Halloween with other holiday traditions is not unique to Mexico: The U.S. version of Halloween has gone global in the past few decades. It’s traveled thanks to companies eager to sell candy and costumes, as well as Hollywood movies and TV programs—such as The Simpsons and Sesame Street —and Instagram and YouTube, which young people use to spread the fun of costumes and celebrations.

“The American Halloween seems to be what has become the mass-media Halloween,” says Jack Santino, a folklorist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and author of the book Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life .

Even in the United States, Halloween is itself a hodgepodge of traditions. Homeowners deck their dwellings with creepy décor. Children carouse their neighborhoods demanding sugary treats. Women dress as a “sexy” angel, pirate, or even pizza. Young adults get plastered on “zombie” bar crawls. And others hole up with a scary movie or join in harvest traditions such as corn mazes and bobbing for apples. Most of those traditions share an inversion of norms: Children threaten adults, images of death and gore are welcome, people want to be afraid, and no one is what they seem.

In every place this rule-bending holiday lands, it becomes something new as people adapt it to their culture. In Mexico, as Fonarow observed, Halloween coexists with regional traditions and ideas about death. In Japan and the United Kingdom, it’s less directly associated with the dead and instead provides a welcome excuse to dress up. People in other countries, such as France, have largely rejected the import. The holiday’s success depends both on the receiving culture and the flexible character of Halloween itself.

In fact, the export of American Halloween reveals how cultural traditions travel and settle in new locales—or don’t. “Holidays can transfer their meanings and have niches in societies where they weren’t created, but they have to have some local meaning and some local interpretation,” says Merry White, an anthropologist at Boston University. “There has to be some pre-existing hook.” In other words, the customs need to land on fertile soil.

Of course, Halloween didn’t originate in the U.S. Though it’s hard to be certain about its roots, scholars have a general sense of its history. As described in a classic 1990 research paper by Russell Belk, who studies consumer culture at York University in Toronto, the holiday can be traced back to the Samhain festival (meaning “summer’s end”) among the Celts, a people who first populated much of Europe some three millennia ago. Researchers suspect Samhain celebrated the harvest and honored deceased ancestors. Celtic Druids may have sacrificed people to the Lord of the Dead, also called Samhain. They lit bonfires to scare off marauding ghosts and witches. Scholars have also proposed they engaged in traditions that may be predecessors of modern trick-or-treating: Participants may have disguised themselves with animal skins and laid banquets for hungry ghosts, or perhaps beggars asked for food during the festival.

Even after the advent of Christianity, Samhain traditions continued in the British Isles. In 835, the Roman Catholic Church attempted to redefine the pagan holiday as All Saints’ Day, or Allhallowmas (hallow being an old term for a saint), on November 1. Church leaders later added All Souls’ Day on November 2. They encouraged people to dress as their favorite saints and celebrate not only deceased saints but other people who had passed on. The church failed to obliterate Samhain traditions, of course, but it gave Halloween—from Allhallows Eve—its modern name.

Halloween never went away, though the popularity of All Saints’ Day in the United Kingdom waned with the rise of Protestantism and the creation of another fall holiday, Guy Fawkes Day. Celebrated November 5, the day commemorates the failure of a 1605 plot to blow up England’s Houses of Parliament. One conspirator, Guy Fawkes, was captured before he could light the fuse. Brits celebrate Fawkes’ downfall with bonfires and children beg for “a penny for the Guy.”

Meanwhile, Samhain and Halloween traditions continued and evolved in the U.K. into the 20th century. Hugh O’Donnell, 69, a media analyst at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, grew up celebrating Halloween in a Scottish steel town. “The kind of masks available today, in a mass market, didn’t exist,” says O’Donnell. Instead, the kids dressed up as ghosts by wearing old white bedsheets.

Children visited their neighbors, where they’d offer some small performance, often a joke or song, in return for a treat. “It was almost always monkey nuts,” recalls O’Donnell, using a word for peanuts in the shell. And they carried lanterns carved not from New World pumpkins but from turnips.

Children also enjoyed what Scots called “dookin” (or dunking) for apples in a barrel, says O’Donnell. “It was all very low-key, people had fun, no one spent a lot of money,” he says.

Similar traditions sailed to the New World with Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine in the 1800s. Over the ensuing centuries, Halloween morphed into something much more commercial. Americans are expected to spend a total of US$9 billion on the holiday in 2018, according to the National Retail Federation. (Of course, that’s still monkey nuts compared with the federation’s predictions for the winter holiday season: US$718–721 billion.)

In the U.K., too, modern Halloween is big business. O’Donnell was surprised to see pumpkin decorations at his local grocery store in early September this year. “The big difference is Americanization,” says O’Donnell, who co-edited the book Treat or Trick? Halloween in a Globalising World . He can’t recall the last time he saw a turnip lantern—though admittedly, pumpkins are easier to carve. “It has basically become Americanized, and that is a synonym for internationalized.”

Yet Halloween in Britain is hardly identical to revelry in the U.S. There’s some trick-or-treating, but it hasn’t taken hold everywhere. Instead, the focus—and what really gave Halloween as celebrated in the States a foothold in the modern United Kingdom—is the costumes. “Us Brits dress up for anything,” says Andy Andreou, manager of Angels Fancy Dress in London, citing movie theme nights, hat parties, wig parties, and fancy-dress office Christmas parties.

When the British get dressed for Halloween, “it’s anything goes, with a bit of blood,” says Andreou. Movie characters and superheroes, such as Batman, are always popular. Other costumes are just silly: One year, Angels’ top sellers included a “zombie banana.”

A love of costume also helped Halloween, as it’s celebrated in the U.S., find a home in Japan, which has had a tradition of costume play, or cosplay , since the 1980s. “The whole idea of dressing up as something else, and performing and acting out and having a good time, dovetails quite nicely with some aspects of the Halloween tradition,” notes John Davis, an anthropologist at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

In Japan, Halloween is mostly divorced from macabre or memorial traditions; people celebrate their dead during the summer festival of Obon. Japanese Halloween has “no sense of fear, and there’s no sense of religiosity at all,” says Junji Koizumi, an anthropologist and professor emeritus at the Osaka University. “It’s just fun. … It’s purely commercial.”

Indeed, it was a media and commercial behemoth that helped bring Halloween to Japan: the Disney empire. Tokyo Disneyland opened its gates in 1983 and began hosting its Happy Halloween Harvest Parade during the 1990s.

There’s no trick-or-treating in Japan, outside of enclaves where American or Irish expats or Japanese who’ve lived in the U.S. reside. “There’s a cultural block against knocking on people’s doors and demanding something of them,” says White, who studies Japanese culture. “It seems very uncivilized to Japanese people.”

Instead, Japanese Halloween is a public celebration mainly enjoyed by teens and young adults, and ground zero is Tokyo’s Shibuya district, a popular dining, shopping, and entertainment area. More than one million costumed celebrants crowd the streets, eating and drinking. The holiday has spread in popularity as participants post Instagram photos and YouTube videos of their revelry.

“It is no longer what Americans would consider as Halloween, but it’s a Halloween of its own,” says Tomoko Hamada, an anthropologist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, who specializes in East Asia. “Many of them don’t even know it has anything to do with American Halloween.”

In Kawasaki, another large city in Japan, a parade is the main draw. The 2018 organizers are expecting up to 2,500 people in costume to promenade. Parading, sometimes in costume, has a long history as part of Japanese festivals, notes Hamada.

What differentiates Halloween from traditional Japanese festivals is its unruliness. “Japan is a very ecological, clean country, where people don’t litter,” Hamada says. But in Shibuya, garbage lines the streets on the morning of November 1. So in Japan too, Halloween inverts norms for one night. Some conservatives rail against the noise and mess, but other people are indifferent to the imported holiday.

Broadly, White says, the Japanese sensibility is that: “If you can add onto your repertoire of holidays, why not?”

People in Japan have also adopted the Christian holiday of Christmas. But the Japanese Christmas is neither religious nor centered around gift-giving; instead it’s a romantic evening, somewhat akin to a U.S. high school prom night. Meanwhile, department stores encouraged the adoption of Valentine’s Day. But rather than a day to give your sweetheart treats, as it’s celebrated in the U.S., in Japan the holiday is split in two. On February 14, women give men gifts such as chocolates. One month later, on White Day, men give women presents, such as white chocolates or white lingerie.

Not every culture welcomes Halloween. “Internationally, there’s a real range from acceptance to rejection,” says Santino, the folklorist from Bowling Green.

Those with conservative views worry about Halloween sullying their culture or promoting capitalism, says Anne Johnson, an anthropologist at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. And Jonas Frykman, an ethnologist and emeritus professor at Lund University in Sweden, says, “People from a religious background find it extremely problematic that, instead of going to the graves of the ancestors or loved ones, you should dress up like devils and go from house to house to try to scare people.”

For example, France flirted with Halloween in the 1990s, but it didn’t really take. That may be because at the same time of the year, the French are busy cleaning and decorating graves for All Saints’ Day, or La Toussaint. “France prides itself on being a secular country, but they still have a lot of church days as national holidays,” Santino says. Though the nation does not collect data on citizen’s religions, it’s estimated that nearly two-thirds of the population are Christian, mostly Roman Catholic. Plus, says Santino, the French already have Le Carnaval in the spring, giving them a time to have fun with parades and masquerades.

Elsewhere, new and old traditions can meld or exist side by side, as Fonarow discovered in Mexico. There, despite the fact that some media coverage suggests Halloween and Day of the Dead are in conflict, anthropologists report that Mexican pushback against the American fall holiday has been overstated.

In fact, centuries before Halloween’s arrival, the Mexican Día de Muertos grew out of two distinct traditions. Before the Spanish colonized the region that is now central and southern Mexico, Aztecs celebrated a summer festival honoring deceased ancestors. Spanish Catholics brought All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, and the Indigenous festival moved and contracted to those two days. Día de Muertos has also spread across much of Latin America, and to other regions as well.

“The goal of these days is to gather the family, the people who are alive and the people who are already dead,” explains Rosa Isela Aguilar Montes de Oca, a freelance anthropologist from the Mexican state of Hidalgo who is based in Munich. On the ofrenda , the living put out the food the dead most enjoyed—even if it wasn’t particularly good for them, she says. “For the people who smoked, we have to put out some cigarettes; for the people who liked beer, we have to set it out also.”

Television and immigration brought Halloween from the United States to Mexico. Migrants who crossed the border into the United States brought the traditions back to Mexico when they returned home, says Aguilar Montes de Oca. She recalls first learning about the holiday from TV programs such as The Munsters .

Given the focus of Día de Muertos, Halloween’s association with death also helped it gain a foothold in Mexico, Fonarow says—even though the holidays reflect very different attitudes toward that subject. In the United States, death is typically considered final, and thus frightening, a view reflected in scary or bloody Halloween costumes. In Mexico, traditional beliefs present death as part of the cycle of life, and Día de Muertos skeletons are typically attractive, not gory. American Halloween glorifies generic, impersonal images of death. Meanwhile, the Mexican holiday is about a personal connection with specific people who’ve died—as explored in the Disney/Pixar film Coco .

During Día de Muertos celebrations, these young children in Mexico sing a song requesting pesos for the “little skulls” they carry. (Credit: Wendy Fonarow)

And yet, Fonarow says, there is also overlap between attitudes toward death, and death iconography, in Mexico and the U.S., giving the two holidays an opportunity to coexist. For example, both holidays feature skeletons. Another commonality is the scary ghost story, a classic element of U.S. Halloween. As an example of such stories in Mexican culture, Fonarow points to the oft-told tale of La Llorona , the weeping woman. She’s the spirit of a woman whose children drowned—some say at her own hand—who now roams the shores of waterways, searching for her sons and tossing in living children who happen upon her.

While Halloween has yet to become a big presence in rural areas of Mexico, American rubber masks and wooden Mexican ones sell side by side in urban shops. Little girls dress up as La Catrina, a Mexican embodiment of death, to trick or treat—typically in commercial downtown areas rather than in residential neighborhoods. Even the imagery of death itself has become a bit blended: Mexican death is typically female but the hooded guy with a scythe sometimes makes an appearance.

That said, certain communities do preserve their local Día de Muertos traditions and try to keep them separate from Halloween. In part, that’s because the Mexican government encourages Indigenous regions to maintain a living heritage.

Aguilar Montes de Oca observed this “living heritage” firsthand while working in Hidalgo’s Indigenous La Huasteca region. She visited a town where the local priest had initiated a beauty pageant, called Señorita Cempoalxóchitl for the Mexican marigold, in 1989 to reinforce an Indigenous identity as part of their Día de Muertos festivities. The contestants wear folk costumes made from the natural products of the region. Finalists speak about their experiences in La Huasteca during the Día de Muertos, called Xantolo in this area.

Yet Aguilar Montes de Oca also observed monster masks and costumes, a la U.S. Halloween, in La Huasteca. As Johnson says of the melding of traditions, “Nothing ever stays pure.”

Halloween’s history supports that statement. Celtic Druids would hardly recognize a person costumed as an undead banana as a modern-day celebrant of Samhain. Nor would 19th-century Irish Catholics see their traditions in the bands of bloodied schoolgirls or human-sized daikon radishes running amok in Shibuya. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re converging and becoming more alike,” argues Davis, because each culture makes the imports its own.

Even as La Huasteca leaders fight against the creep of Halloween creepiness, Día de Muertos imagery shows up in U.S. shops in candies, in pumpkin-carving kits, and even on tea towels. And back at Angels Fancy Dress, Andreou reports a rising trend to buy or rent Día de Muertos–themed costumes—inspired in part by the holiday’s representations in the films Spectre and Coco . Whichever holiday, or holidays, one celebrates, Halloween and its cultural counterparts are here to stay.

Amber Dance is an award-winning freelance science journalist based in Southern California. She earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California, San Diego, before retraining as a journalist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She enjoys covering topics beyond her life-sciences comfort zone and contributes to a variety of publications. Follow her on Twitter @amberldance .

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Learn about the origin of Halloween

Halloween, Its History and Celebration

There are quite a number of holidays in the world, each having different reasons for being observed, different degrees of significance, and different levels of popularity, depending on where one is located.

Among the holidays, I am most fascinated with that which features a pumpkin lantern, scary costumes and decorations, and kids shouting “trick or treat” to their neighbors at dusk. I am talking about Halloween.

I find Halloween the most interesting among all the world holidays, mainly because it is foreign to me. I want to find out its history: how it came to be, where it originated, and how it became such a popular tradition practiced in many parts of the world. I also want to know the basic tenets surrounding its popularity and practice.

Commonly observed on the eve of October 31, Halloween is a holiday for remembering and honoring the dead. It is closely linked to All Souls’ Day (also called Hallowmas or All Hallows Days) and All Saint’ Day, which are both considered holy days in the Roman Catholic Church.

All Saints’ Day was established in the 9 th Century to honor the saints of the Christian church, whereas All Souls’ Day was established a century later to help purify the spirits of the dead. Both celebrations are said to have pagan origins (Santino, 1994a; Santino, 1994b; Lanford, n.d.).

Halloween is a very old tradition. Its origins date back from many thousand years ago. And how it is currently being celebrated is very far removed from how it used to be practiced, mainly because many cultures have added ‘flavor’ to it through the centuries. Halloween originated from the Celts.

The Celts, like many other pagans, worshipped nature. They had many gods, their favorite being the sun. They believed that the sun was the one responsible for the beautiful earth and everything that grew on it. (Landford, n.d.; Santino, 1994b).

According to Lanford, the Celts “marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn” (Lanford, n.d.). Among the holidays celebrated by the Celts is the Samhain, which heavily influenced later Halloween celebrations.

Samhain was celebrated on the eve of October 31 until the following day, November 1. The Celts believed that on the eve of Samhain, the spirits of the departed roamed the earth. As such, they offered food and drink to ward the spirits off. They also performed rituals at sacred hilltops, where they offered human and animal sacrifices.

However, when the Celtic lands were conquered by the Roman Empire by the end of the first century A.D., the Romans adopted some of the traditions of the Celts, thus creating a mixture of Celtic and Catholic religious observances.

In Britain, which used to be a part of Celtic lands, the Romans had incorporated some Samhain customs into their own pagan harvest festival, which honors Pomona, goddess of fruit trees, to make it easier for the Romans to conquer the Celts (Landford, n.d.) completely.

In areas that were not completely conquered by the Romans, like Ireland and Scotland, however, pure Celtic influences stayed on much longer. In these areas, the Samhain custom was abandoned only during the earlier part of the Middle Ages, when the locals converted to Christianity.

One of the strategies employed by the Roman Catholic Church to win over the loyalty of the converts was incorporating some customs of the conquered lands into its religious traditions. One example of this is Halloween.

In 835 AD, Pope Gregory IV replaced Samhain with All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ Day, closer in spirit to Samhain and modern Halloween, was first instituted at a French monastery in 998 and quickly spread throughout Europe.

Folk observances linked to these Christian holidays, including Halloween, thus preserved many of the ancient Celtic customs associated with Samhain (Santino, 1994a; Santino 1994b; Lanford, n.d.).

There are traditions observed during Halloweens that are believed to have no basis in Christianity. This is mainly because some of these traditions are influences of other religions and beliefs, specifically those of the Celtic tribes.

One example of this is the jack-o’-lantern, which originated from Scotland during the Medieval period. But instead of the carved up pumpkin which are used in present-day Halloween celebrations, the earlier jack-o’-lanterns were turnips.

Present Halloween festivities feature folk beliefs that have to do with death and the supernatural. Decorations during the holiday include imagery on death, like cobwebs, human skeletons, and skulls, and costumes based on supernatural beliefs, stories, and traditions, like those Dracula, White Lady, witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and so on.

Even natural objects that are believed to bring bad omen, like spiders, black cats, and bats, are also featured during Halloween celebrations as either decorations or costumes. But the most celebrated of all the Halloween decorations is the jack-o’-lantern.

The jack-o’-lantern is a pumpkin that was hollowed-out and then carved to resemble a monstrous face. Inside it is a candle or a bulb, illuminating it. The jack-o’-lantern is based on British tales, which say that the soul of a dead person named Jack O’Lantern was barred from both heaven and hell and was thus condemned to roam the earth aimlessly with his lantern.

As previously mentioned, the traditional jack-o-lantern used to be carved from turnip, potato, or beet. But the turnips were not readily available in America, so the pumpkin was used as a replacement. Placed on windows, the lanterns represent the souls of the departed loved ones and served as a protection against bad spirits (Landford, n.d.; Barth, 1972)

An interesting feature of Halloween celebrations is trick or treat where children dressed as a witch, a vampire, a ghost, or any other supernatural character go from house to house to solicit candies or treats from the house owners in their neighborhood.

The children greet every house owner with the cry, “Trick or Treat.” The greeting suggests that the house owner should present them with a treat. Otherwise, some form of a prank will be committed against them.

Although ‘Trick or Treat’ still widely practiced in many Christian nations, its practice has declined to begin in the 1970s. This may be largely due to studies suggesting the negative effect of junks, like candies, on children’s health.

Moreover, many parents are now concerned about their children still going around their neighborhood after dark. What many parents do now is to accompany their children in their Trick or Treat, or have their children accompanied by a responsible adult.

Another feature of Halloween celebration is a custom party, either for kids or for adults, or both. Traditional costumes as well as costumes inspired by pop cultures, such as movie characters, and even politicians are used.

For such parties, adults often use costumes with “satirical or humorous overtones” (Lanford, n.d.; Barth, 1972). In most costume parties, best in costume contests are usually held, where the hosts or chosen judges choose among the guests the one who is wearing the best costume.

At present, Halloween is already a popular holiday, especially in Christian nations, although there was some resistance from some Christian sects, like the English Puritans who rejected the celebration of Halloween on the basis that it is a Catholic and pagan tradition. The Puritans are members of a strict Protestant sect (Lanford, n.d.; Santino, 1994b).

Despite the resistance from the Puritans, however, Halloween spread in many Christian countries in the world. Its spread was primarily ensured by the spread of Catholicism. In the United States, British colonists transplanted the observance of Halloween in Virginia and Maryland. Moreover, in the mid 19 th Century, Irish who came into the United States as immigrants likewise helped popularize Halloween throughout the United States (Lanford, n.d.).

According to Lanford, young people in the 19th and early 20th centuries tended to observe Halloween by “perpetrating minor acts of vandalism, such as overturning sheds or breaking windows” (Lanford, n.d).

The ritual of trick or tricking started sometime in the beginning of the 1930s when Halloween mischief was slowly transformed from merely perpetuating vandalistic acts, to trick or tricking in the neighborhood.

As time passed by, Halloween treats became more plentiful as the number of tricks decreased. It is believed that the trick or treat was introduced to lessen the pranks and destruction that typically accompanied the Halloween celebrations (Santino, 1994a; Santino 1994b).

In some areas, however, pranks still survived. A day before Halloween, there is such an event called Mischief Night in some areas of the United States, where vandalism sometimes got out of hand. Landford (n.d.) shares: “in Detroit, Michigan, Mischief Night — known there as Devil’s Night —provided the occasion for waves of arson that sometimes destroyed whole city blocks during the 1970s and 1980s.”

Beginning in the 1970s, Halloween has become increasingly popular. Adult celebrations of this occasion feature elaborate satirical costumes, boisterous festivities, and drunken revelry while the costume-donning kids go house to house, treat-or-tricking their neighbors, happy with the candies that they get.

At present, Halloween is one of the most celebrated Holidays in the world, with both the young ones and the adults taking part in the festivities. It is also among the most commercialized. During Halloween, costumes, masks, and decors dominate the malls and commercial centers. Restaurants and event venues also have a heyday during the celebrations. Indeed, Halloween is such a fascinating holiday.

Bibliography

Barth, Edna. (1972). Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts. New York: Seaburry Press.

Landford, Brent. (n.d.) “Halloween.” MSN Encarta.

Santino, Jack. (1994a). All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life. University of Illiois Press.

Santino, Jack. (1994b). Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Knoxville. University of Tennessee Press.

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A Brief History of Halloween

Jolly Hallowe'en. Art and Picture Collection, NYPL. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1587804

All Hallows' Eve, or Halloween as it is commonly referred, is a global celebration on October 31. It developed from the ancient Celtic ritual of Samhain, which was, in the simplest terms, a festival celebrating the changing of the seasons from light to dark (summer to winter). This would usually take place around November 1. 

Traditionally, a bonfire would be lit, sweets would be prepared, and costumes would be worn to ward off evil spirits as the ancient Celts believed that, at this time of year, the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest.

Early Christian officials tried to impose their own holiday in an effort to stop their converts from practicing non-Christian festivals. Pope Gregory III deemed November 1, All Saints' Day, a celebration of Christian martyrs and saints, and November 2 became All Souls Day, a day for remembering the souls of the dead.  All Saints' Day later became known as All Hallows' Day, and the previous day, October 31, became known as All Hallows' Eve, then later, Halloween. Despite the best efforts of the church, people still continued to celebrate Halloween with traditional bonfires, costumes, treats, and a focus on spirits of the dead.

All this history is not meant to confuse Halloween and its Mexican cousin, Dia de Muertos, a.k.a. Dia de Los Muertos, a completely separate celebration that occurs during the same timeframe, October 31 to November 2. While Halloween focuses on the dark and grim aspects of death, Dia de Muertos is a celebration of the connection between the living and the dead, as well as life after death. 

The Witch. Art and Picture Collection, NYPL. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1587780

While Halloween originated in Europe, the holiday became the celebration we recognize today when it was brought to America by the early settlers. People originally carved out turnips and placed candles inside to ward off evil spirits, but Americans switched from turnips to pumpkins.

In 1820, Washington Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , became one of the first distinctly American ghost stories centered around the holiday. Halloween received its biggest transformation within the last 50 or so years, thanks to the creation of big candy corporations, and, of course, Hollywood.

Because of its association with all things dark, spooky, and undead, Halloween became the go-to holiday for the release of most horror films and television shows. Director John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is probably the best example, as it changed the public image of the holiday from a night for children to dress up in silly costumes to a night of pure terror.

Every year, cities and towns all over the world celebrate with festivals, parades, and theme park events. No matter how Halloween is celebrated, or which aspects of the holiday are celebrated, it has become a global phenomenon comparable to Christmas in terms of how widespread and important it is to the public conscience.

If you would like to learn more about Halloween beyond my extremely brief summary, or just want some spooky suggestions, please check out the recommended titles listed below. Happy Halloween! ( All summaries adapted from the publishers. )

For Little Goblins and Ghouls

The Halloween Tree

by Ray Bradbury

Eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite, through time and space, to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween. 

National Geographic Readers: Halloween

by Laura F. Marsh

From visiting the pumpkin patch, to bobbing for apples, to picking out a favorite costume, Halloween is a magical time for young children. The fun and festivities are captured in this book, with full-color illustrations and simple easy-to-grasp text. In the spirit of this beloved holiday, this level one reader is sure to captivate and fascinate children.

Halloween Crafts

by Fay Robinson

Provides information about the origins and customs of Halloween, ideas for celebrating this holiday, and instructions for making a bat sock puppet, a construction paper haunted house, and a treat bag that looks like a coffin.

Dark Harvest 

by Norman Partridge

Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever his name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. And how he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death. Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror—and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy… 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

by Washington Irving; illustrated by Gris Grimly.

A superstitious schoolmaster, in love with a wealthy farmer's daughter, has a terrifying encounter with a headless horseman.

Graveyard for Lunatics

Halloween Night, 1954. A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery—and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.

Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween 

by Lisa Morton

Halloween aficionado Lisa Morton provides a thorough history of this spooky day. She begins by looking at how holidays like the Celtic Samhain, a Gaelic harvest festival, have blended with the British Guy Fawkes Day and the Catholic All Souls’ Day to produce the modern Halloween, and explains how the holiday was reborn in America, where costumes and trick-or-treat rituals have become new customs. 

Morton takes into account the influence of related but independent holidays, especially the Mexican Day of the Dead, as well as the explosion in popularity of haunted attractions and the impact of such events as 9/11 and the economic recession on the celebration today. Trick or Treat also examines the effect Halloween has had on popular culture through the literary works of Washington Irving and Ray Bradbury, films like  Halloween  and  The Nightmare Before Christmas , and television shows such as  Buffy the Vampire Slayer  and  The Simpsons .

Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

by Nicholas Rogers

Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, from classical history to Hollywood films, Rogers traces Halloween as it emerged from the Celtic festival of Samhain (summer's end), picked up elements of the Christian Hallowtide (All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day), arrived in North America as an Irish and Scottish festival, and evolved into an unofficial but large-scale holiday by the early 20th century. He examines the 1970s and '80s phenomena of Halloween sadism (razor blades in apples) and inner-city violence (arson in Detroit), as well as the immense influence of the horror film genre on the reinvention of Halloween as a terror-fest.

Throughout his vivid account, Rogers shows how Halloween remains, at its core, a night of inversion, when social norms are turned upside down, and a temporary freedom of expression reigns supreme. He examines how this very license has prompted censure by the religious right, occasional outrage from law enforcement officials, and appropriation by left-leaning political groups.

Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween

by David J. Skal

Using a mix of personal anecdotes and brilliant social analysis, Skal examines the amazing phenomenon of Halloween, exploring its dark Celtic history and illuminating why it has evolved—in the course of a few short generations—from a quaint, small-scale celebration into the largest seasonal marketing event outside of Christmas.

Traveling the country, Skal profiles a wide cross-section of American hard-nosed businessmen who see Halloween in terms of money; fundamentalists who think it is blasphemous; practicing witches who view it as sacred; and more ordinary men and women who go to extraordinary lengths, on this one night only, to transform themselves and their surroundings into elaborate fantasies. Firmly rooted in a deeper cultural and historical analysis, these interviews seek to understand what the various rituals and traditions associated with the holiday have to say about our national psyche.

Halloween: Vintage Holiday Graphics

edited by Jim Heimann

Trick or treat (smell my feet!) A guaranteed trip down memory lane, this book celebrates All Hallows' Eve in American graphic and print media from the early 1900s to the '60s. Featuring witches, ghouls, ghosts, and jack-o-lanterns, the scariest postcards and decorations, and the silliest costumes and candid photos are collected here. With an introduction tracing the unexpected history of Halloween and its traditions, Vintage Halloween is a nostalgic tribute to one of America's favorite holidays.

Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costumes & Masquerade

photographs by Phyllis Galembo, text by Mark Alice Durant, foreword by Valerie Steele

A tour of 100 years of American Halloween attire features a wealth of images depicting revelers and trick-or-treaters in disguise and enhanced by special lighting effects, in a volume complemented by a history of the holiday and Halloween fashion.

A Season With the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

by J. W. Ocker

Salem, Massachusetts may be the strangest city on the planet. A single event in its 400 years of history—the Salem Witch Trials of 1692—transformed it into the Capital of Creepy in America. But Salem is a seasonal town—and its season happens to be Halloween. Every October, this small city of 40,000 swells to close to half a million as witches, goblins, ghouls, and ghosts (and their admirers) descend on Essex Street.

For the fall of 2015, occult enthusiast and Edgar Award–winning writer J.W. Ocker moved his family of four to downtown Salem to experience firsthand a season with the witch, visiting all of its historical sites and macabre attractions. In between, he interviews its leaders and citizens, its entrepreneurs and visitors, its street performers and Wiccans, its psychics and critics, creating a picture of this unique place and the people who revel in, or merely weather, its witchiness.

The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year by Jean Markale

During the night of Samhain, the Celtic precursor of today's holiday, the borders between life and death were no longer regarded as insurmountable barriers. Two-way traffic was temporarily permitted between this world and the Other World, and the wealth and wisdom of the sidhe, or fairy folk, were available to the intrepid individuals who dared to enter their realm.

Jean Markale enriches our understanding of how the transition from the light to the dark half of the year was a moment in which time stopped and allowed the participants in the week-long festival to attain a level of consciousness not possible in everyday life, an experience we honor in our modern celebrations of Halloween.  

Samhain, Rituals, Recipes & Lore for Halloween by Diana Rajchel

Llewellyn's Sabbat Essentials series explores the old and new ways of celebrating the seasonal rites that are the cornerstones in the witch's year. A well-rounded introduction to Samhain, this attractive book features rituals, recipes, lore, and correspondences. It also includes hands-on information for modern celebrations, spells and divination, recipes and crafts, invocations and prayers, and more!

Haunted Air: Anonymous Halloween Photographs from c.1875–1955  by Ossian Brown

Recommended by Billy Parrott

The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits and mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others.

The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year

by Jean Markale

Jean Markale enriches our understanding of how the transition from the light to the dark half of the year was a moment in which time stopped and allowed the participants in the week-long festival to attain a level of consciousness not possible in everyday life, an experience we honor in our modern celebrations of Halloween.

Samhain, Rituals, Recipes & Lore for Halloween

by Diana Rajchel

What Does The Word “Halloween” Mean?

• Why Is It Called Halloween?
• What Is All Saints' Day?
• What Is Samhain?
• Where Does Halloween Come From?
• What is The Day Of The Dead?

Fittingly, everything about Halloween is a bit bizarre. Kids put on costumes and demand candy from strangers. People decorate their houses with spiderwebs and gravestones. Even the word itself sounds weird. Where does Halloween come from? And how did the celebration of all things spooky come to have a history that’s intertwined with an ancient Celtic festival and a Christian holiday in honor of saints?

Hold open your trick-or-treat bag (a pillowcase, if you’re doing it right) for some tricky word treats.

Why is it called Halloween ?

The first records of the word Halloween come from around the 1550s. Halloween is sometimes spelled Hallowe’en , reflecting the fact that its name comes from a shortening of Allhallows Even . Allhallows is another name for the Christian holiday known as All Saints’ Day . In Allhallows Even , even means the same thing as eve —the evening or day before a holiday (as in Christmas Eve ). The word hallow is used in reference to the saints— hallowed means “holy.”

What is that apostrophe doing in Hallowe’en ? Learn about it here.

What is All Saints’ Day ?

All Saints’ Day is a Christian holiday on November 1 in honor of all the saints. For Catholics, it’s often considered a holy day of obligation in which they are obligated to attend Mass (meaning that many Catholic school students know the day after Halloween as a day off from school). The day after, November 2, is All Souls’ Day —a Christian holiday of solemn prayer for all dead persons.

Like many Christian holidays, the observance of All Saints’ Day —and its date—are thought to have been influenced by preexisting religious traditions. Many historians believe that the observance of All Saints’ Day was situated on November 1 in Britain and Ireland to coincide with (or replace) the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain .

What is Samhain ?

Samhain , pronounced [ sah -win ] is an ancient Celtic harvest festival in celebration of the beginning of winter and a new year.

It was celebrated by the ancient Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles on or around November 1, which the Celts considered the start of winter and the year. Some scholars believe the word Samhain means “summer’s end.”

Samhain is among the most important holidays in Pagan and Neopagan traditions, in which major festivals are held at the change of seasons.

Among the ancient Celts, it was a time of year when it was believed that the threshold of the spirit world was opened for spirits to pass through and haunt the living. People marked the occasion by lighting bonfires for protection and dressing as the spirits and creatures they believed could cross over that night. Sound familiar?

Today, the word Samhain is sometimes used as another word for Halloween .

Where does Halloween come from?

Many of the traditions associated with Halloween are thought to originate in Samhain, especially the notion of it as a time when creatures from the spirit realm roam the world of the living. Also the costumes.

Under Christianity, some of the traditions of Samhain were incorporated into All Saints’ Day—which was placed on November 1. Many of these customs were brought by immigrants to the US, where Halloween has been influenced by and has incorporated elements from several cultures to become what it is today. One cultural celebration with some notable parallels with Halloween is the Day of the Dead .

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What is the Day of the Dead ?

Day of the Dead is the English name for Día de los Muertos , a festival in celebration and honor of the souls of the dead. It takes place on November 1 and 2 and is primarily celebrated in Mexico (where it originated) and among people with Mexican heritage, as well as in some other Central and South American countries.

It is observed as a day to honor deceased family members and loved ones by welcoming back their spirits through various customs, including making dedicated altars, laying out special food offerings, and visiting their graves.

Though the focus of the festival can be somber, it is typically observed in festive and celebratory ways, including with parades in which the souls of the dead are said to take part.

Its ultimate origins are debated, but many of its traditions are thought to be based on Indigenous customs, including those of the Aztecs and Toltecs. The lighthearted tone of the festival is thought to derive from the fact that mourning practices in such cultures have traditionally been less somber due to beliefs that souls of the dead remain among the living. Some of the customs are often traced to influences from Christian European colonizers and missionaries, notably the placing of the festival to coincide with the Christian holidays of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

Somewhat like the Day of the Dead , Halloween is often seen as a way to embrace the macabre —scary things or things related to death.

Halloween is rich with time-honored traditions, and a wealth of words to go with them. Read about some of these traditions:

Who is the “jack” in the term “jack-o’-lantern", after you amass your favorite halloween candy, learn about the origins of their names..

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Halloween — Horror Essay: Halloween Horror: The Horror Of Halloween

Horror Essay: Halloween Horror: The Horror of Halloween

• Categories: Halloween Horror

About this sample

Words: 652 |

Published: Mar 13, 2024

Words: 652 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

References:

• Smith, J. (2018). The Origins of Halloween: From Samhain to Modern Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Jones, L. (2019). Halloween Horror: A Cultural History. London: Routledge.

Bibliography:

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Department of History

Graduate student essay contest from the michigan historical review.

The Michigan Historical Review (MHR) is still accepting submissions for its 2024 Graduate Student Essay Contest. The MHR is the only scholarly history journal in the state, and we publish twice a year. The winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000 and publication in the Spring 2025 issue.

Today more than ever, those who seek college-level positions need to build a curriculum vitae that includes at least a measure of scholarly publication. This is a wonderful opportunity for an aspiring historian to begin publishing.

Entries must be graduate-level papers that involve the history of Michigan in some manner and must include original research from primary sources. Papers should be a recommended 10,000-15,000 words, footnoted, double-spaced, without the writer’s name on any pages. A cover letter including the school program and supervisor’s name must be included with the essay. Submissions should be e-mailed to [email protected] no later than July 1, 2024 . Members of our editorial board read the essays and provide each with a critique to assist in reshaping the essay into a more publishable form. In the case of entries that do not win, but show promise of being publishable after revision, we urge student authors to revise and resubmit for an additional double-blind reading. The process can be a very valuable experience for your students.

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