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Halloween's Ancient Origins
by Bob Brooke

Pumpkins, witches, ghosts, and goblins—all are signs of Halloween. Though the celebration has grown ever more commercial, its roots go far back into history. Today it’s a fun celebration when kids and adults dress up and ask strangers and acquaintances for candy and tricks. But what is the origin of Halloween?

Celtic Origins
The ancient Celts believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest during their festival of Samhain, making it the ideal time to communicate with the deceased and divine the future.

Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain meaning “summer’s end,” 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. It later blended with Christian traditions, particularly All Hallows' Eve, as the church sought to incorporate local customs into its practices.

In pre-Christian Europe, October 31 was traditionally a holiday for north European cultures as it marked the change of seasons when cattle were brought in from fields. It was also a time to remember the deceased, particularly as the days grew darker during that time of year and winter came closer. The time was seen as a spiritual preparation and wanting the deceased to given their blessing through the sacrificing of animals for meat and the harvest.

Since death brought no food or bad food. People would place food for the dead so that they could feast and be kept happy. The giving of food to dead could be the origin of giving food out in Halloween. Sacrifices were made to placate the gods but also the spirits that roamed the Earth. Darkness gave more opportunity for the spirits to roam while light was for the living and symbolized life.

The Celts believed the dead brought bad luck or made it difficult for the living. These traditions likely developed in the Neolithic or very early in the development of agriculture, as people began to depend on the harvest to get through the winters and remembering the dead became a way in which luck was given to the living.

The celebration of Samhain was a time for the Celts to ask for help in the winter so that the living could make it through the challenging months ahead.

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 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.

The Roman Interpretation
By 43 CE, the Romans had conquered most of the Celtic lands. Over the next 400 years that they occupied the Celtic territory, two festivals of Roman origin became 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 the Romans honored 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 still practiced today on Halloween.

The Christian church did largely attempt to disassociate these old festivals by creating Christian ones that adopted similar themes. Pope Gregory in the 8th century initiated the celebration of All Saints' Day, a day to honor the saints, and made November 1 as the date for the celebration. Earlier Christians had celebrated something similar in May but the Church suppressed it and moved the day to November 1. In a way, this reflected how popular celebrations and remembering people who became saints, known and unknown, was not only important to newly converted people but incorporate those earlier northern European Celtic traditions of Samhain.

The evening before became known as All Hallows' Eve, which eventually evolved into Halloween. This Christian observance incorporated some traditions from Samhain, blending pagan and Christian practices.

People began to associate November 2nd with All Souls' day, a day to celebrate those who had died. They began to incorporate the traditions of lighting a flame to remember the dead and passing out food to them into the Christian holidays, although their origin was pre-Christian.

In the year 1000, the Church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. People celebrated All Souls’ Day similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, processions, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. This celebration was also called All-Hallows and the night before it. The traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

People often dressed in black or dark colors on October 31st as a way to begin to remember the dead, with celebrations beginning on the night of October 31st. This meant that people also started carrying lanterns to light their way through the streets. Myths and beliefs about the dead haunting this world and needing to be placated never went away either. This meant that lanterns needed to be scary so that they could scare the dead spirits.

In France, Spain and likely other regions, people visited cemeteries on Halloween bringing along their lanterns so that they could feed the dead through gifts of food or milk placed by their gravestones. People began to associate earlier stories and beliefs of Samhain with October 31st as the day the dead would roam the Earth as well, thus the need to continue to placate the dead. In the 12th century, churches would sometimes ring their bells on Halloween day to remember the souls that were still in purgatory or were still roaming this Earth because they had yet to be judged.

Halloween Comes to America
The Protestants who settled what’s now New England limited the celebration of Halloween because of their rigid beliefs. Halloween was more commonly recognized in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and American Indians merged, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to appear. 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.

Irish immigrants brought their Halloween celebrations to America in the 19th century. They introduced customs like trick-or-treating, which had roots in the practice of "souling," in which children would go door-to-door asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead. Over time, Halloween transformed into a community-centered holiday filled with activities like costume parties, pumpkin carving, and festive gatherings. During the 1930s, trick-or-treating began to develop combined with the earlier tradition of wearing clothing to ward off spirits or remember the dead that derived from the Samhain and pre-Christian traditions.

For some, All Hallows Eve and All Souls Day remained solemn days with churches holding mass in graveyards on Halloween night to remember the dead. While lanterns, shaped into scary faces, dated to the Middle Ages, people in the United States began to use pumpkins to make them instead of the turnips traditionally used in Europe

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