Where Did Halloween Come From

Welcome to WhereDidHalloweenComeFrom.Com, the web’s number one resource for answering all of your questions about one of the world’s favorite holidays, Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve.  Halloween is the one night of the year when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is its thinnest, and when it is thought that the spirits of those who have gone on before us can roam the earth.

But what are the origins of Halloween, and where did Halloween come from, anyway?  Halloween is one of the world’s oldest holidays, and it falls during a time of year when many parts of the globe are straddling the line between the fall and winter seasons.  Halloween is a time that is celebrated and feared.  Halloween is thought to have its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain.  It was during Samhain that people would light bonfires and dress up in costumes to fend off spirits and ghosts.  The Celts lived around two millennia ago in the region that covers present day Ireland, the UK and parts of France. The Celtic New Year is celebrated on November 1^st, and this day commemorated the end of summer season and the end of the harvest season and the start of a cold, dark winter, which was a period that many Celts had come to associate with death.  Celtic custom has it that on the eve of the beginning of the New Year, the barrier that exists between the world of the dead and the living becomes blurred.  The night that Samhain is celebrated, it is thought that the dead can return to earth to damage crops and cause other trouble.  Celtic people also believed that the appearance of these otherworldly ghouls made it simpler for their Druids (priests) to predict future occurrences for the winter ahead.

During the festival, the Druid priests would build large bonfires, where they would make sacrifices to Celtic deities.  During the festivities, the Celts would wear costumes, usually consisting of both skins and head of animals, and would try to tell fortunes for one another.  Once the celebration came to an end, the Celts would use fire from the night’s bonfires to light the fire in their hearths, which they thought would protect them from harm during the impending winter months.

By the year 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered most of the territory that belonged to the Celts.  The Romans would rule the Celtic land for the next 400 years.  During these four centuries, two Roman festivals would be blended with the Celtic festivals.  One such festival was known as Feralia, a festival held each year to commemorate the dead.  The second was a day that was held in honor of the Roman goddess of trees and fruit, Pomona.  Pomona’s symbol is the apple, so the inclusion of this festival is likely the source behind the Halloween-related game of bobbing for apples.

In the early 600s, Pope Boniface the Fourth dedicated the Roman Pantheon in honor of Christian Martyrs, establishing All Martyrs Day.  A century and a half later, Pope Gregory expanded the celebration of the martyrs to include the saints as well, and moved the festival date to November 1^st, which coincided with the Celtic New Year.  The day eventually became known as All Saints Day. This festival was ultimately expanded throughout the years to include Celtic rites and customs.  By the eleventh century, the church would designate November 2^nd as All Souls Day, which was a time when the dead would be honored.  It is thought that the church was making an attempt to replace the Celtic festival that honors the dead with a related holiday that was sanctioned by the church.  All Souls Day was celebrated very much like Samhain, including the practice of building huge bonfires, dressing up as devils, angels and saints, and putting on parades.

All Saints Day was also called All-Hallows or All-Hallowmas Day, and then ultimately, the term was spoken as “Halloween”.

In Colonial America, the celebration of Halloween was very limited. This was due to the strict Protestant belief system in the colonies.  Halloween became more common in the southern colonies and Maryland that it did in New England.  The customs and beliefs of the different ethnic groups that arrived from Europe began to meld with those of the Native Americans, however, and over time, a distinctly American holiday began to surface.

The first celebrations of Halloween in America included play parties, which were public events that were held in celebration of the harvest.  Neighbors of these events would tell each other’s fortunes, sing, dance, and tell stories about the dead.  These colonial Halloween celebrations featured mischief-making and the telling of ghost stories.  By the 1850s, annual festivals in the autumn were the norm, although Halloween was not yet celebrated countrywide.

During the last half of the 19^th century, America saw a flood of new people immigrating to its shores.  These immigrants, particularly the millions that were fleeing the potato famine in Ireland in 1846, did their part to make the celebrating Halloween a more widespread phenomenon.  Americans drew from both Irish and English customs, and begun to dress in costumes, going door to door, asking for money or food.  This eventually became what we know now as the tradition of trick-or-treat.  By the end of the centuries, Halloween was more of a community or neighborhood event.  By the turn of the century, parties celebrating Halloween for both kids and adults were commonplace and focused on games, food, and costumes.  Community leaders encouraged parents to take the frightening aspects out of the celebration, and it was during this time that the holiday lost a lot of its superstitious and religious based overtones.

By the early 1900s, the Halloween holiday became a more secular and community based holiday that is known more for being beloved by children than for honoring saints.  In most communities by 1950, Halloween was solely aimed at the young people in a community, with most Halloween parties moving away from a community celebration to a classroom celebration or a home party.  Trick-or-treating became a custom that was practiced each year, as it was a good way for the whole community to be involved in an activity inexpensively.  The theory is that families give out treats in order to avoid having tricks played on them (like having the front lawn strewn with toilet tissue or having a house “egged”).

Halloween continues to be popular, and seems to grow in popularity each year.  More and more adults now dress up for Halloween, and nearly all children wear costumes either to school and/or in a trick-or-treat outing.  Homeowners decorate the inside and outside of their homes in festive seasonal décor to pay homage to ghosts, ghouls, zombies, witches, monsters and other creatures that have been given popularity by Halloween.  All told, Americans spend more than $6 billion each year on Halloween, making it second only to Christmas in terms of economic importance.

So there you have it.  Now that you know the answer to the question “Where did Halloween come from”, you are better prepared to celebrate one of the world’s favorite holidays!

Happy Halloween!