Halloween History and Origin

Halloween is the one of the oldest holidays still celebrated today. It's one of the most
popular holidays, second only to Christmas. While millions of people celebrate
Halloween without knowing its origins and myths, the history and facts of Halloween
make the holiday more fascinating.

Some people view Halloween as a time for fun, putting on costumes, trick-or-treating,
and having theme parties. Others view it as a time of superstitions, ghosts, goblins and
evil spirits that should be avoided at all costs.

As the Christian debate goes on, celebrating Halloween is a preference that is not always
viewed as participating in an evil holiday. Halloween is often celebrated with no
reference to pagan rituals or the occult.

The History Halloween

Halloween is on October 31st, the last day of the Celtic calendar. It was originally a
pagan holiday, honoring the dead. Halloween was referred to as All Hallows Eve and
dates back to over 2000 years ago.

All Hallows Eve is the evening before All Saints Day, which was created by Christians to
convert pagans, and is celebrated on November 1st. The Catholic church honored saints
on this designated day.

The Origin of Halloween

While there are many versions of the origins and old customs of Halloween, some remain
consistent by all accounts. Different cultures view Holloween somewhat differently but
traditional Halloween practices remain the same.

Halloween culture can be traced back to the Druids (tu sĩ), a Celtic culture in Ireland,
Britain and Northern Europe. Roots lay in the feast of Samhain, which was annually on
October 31st to honor the dead.
Samhain signifies "summers end" or November. Samhain was a harvest festival with
huge sacred (thần thánh) bonfires (lửa mừng), marking the end of the Celtic year and
beginning of a new one. Many of the practices involved in this celebration were fed on
superstition*(mê tín).

The Celts believed the souls of the dead roamed the streets and villages at night. Since
not all spirits were thought to be friendly, gifts and treats were left out to pacify the evil
and ensure next years crops would be plentiful. This custom evolved into trick-or-
treating.

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Traditional activities

include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses" and carving
jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North
America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the
late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the
United Kingdom as well as of Australia and New Zealand.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced
"sah-win").

The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture.
Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for
winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the
worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life
and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.

The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted
insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the
history of Halloween.

Masks and consumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.

Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around Halloween in which they

proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery with the
question, "Trick or treat?" The "trick" part of "trick or treat" is a threat to play a trick on
the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main
traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a
neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in preparation for trick-or-treaters.

Trick-or-treating spread from the western United States eastward, stalled by sugar
rationing that began in April 1942 during World War II and did not end until June 1947.
A jack-o'-lantern (sometimes also spelled Jack O'Lantern) is typically a carved
pumpkin. It is associated chiefly with the holiday Halloween. Typically the top is cut off,
and the inside flesh then scooped out; an image, usually a monstrous face, is carved onto
the outside surface, and the lid replaced. During the night, a candle is placed inside to
illuminate the effect. The term is not particularly common outside North America,
although the practice of carving lanterns for Halloween is.

Halloween costumes are outfits worn on or around October 31, the day of Halloween.
Halloween is a modern-day holiday originating in the Pagan Celtic holiday of Samhain
(in Christian times, the eve of All Saints Day). Although popular histories of Halloween
claim that the practice goes back to ancient celebrations of Samhain, in fact there is little
primary documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween before the twentieth
century. Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in America in the early 1900s,
as often for adults as for children. The first mass-produced Halloween costumes appeared
in stores in the 1930s when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in the United States.

What sets Halloween costumes apart from costumes for other celebrations or days of
dressing up is that they are often designed to imitate supernatural and scary beings.
Costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons,
witches, and devils. There are also costumes of pop culture figures like presidents, or
film, television, and cartoon characters. Another popular trend is for women (and in some
cases, men) to use Halloween as an excuse to wear particularly revealing costumes,
showing off more skin than would be socially acceptable otherwise.

Halloween costumes are traditionally modeled after monsters such as ghosts, skeletons,
witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular
characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.

Foods

Candy apple

Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, candy apples (known
as toffee apples outside North America), caramel or taffy apples are common Halloween
treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by
rolling them in nuts.

At one time, candy apples were commonly given to children, but the practice rapidly
waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items
like pins and razor blades in the apples.[47] While there is evidence of such incidents,[48]
they are quite rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents
assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the
peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in
order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning
incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.

One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays,
the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish: báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a
plain ring, a coin and other charms are placed before baking. It is said that those who get
a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of king
cake at the festival of Epiphany.

List of foods associated with the holiday:

• Barmbrack (Ireland)
• Bonfire toffee (Britain)
• Candy apples
• Candy corn (North America)
• Caramel apples
• Caramel corn
• Colcannon (Ireland)
• Pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread
• Roasted pumpkin seeds
• Roasted sweet corn
• Soul cakes
• Novelty candy shaped like skulls, pumpkins, bats, worms, etc.