Trick or Treat

No matter what your age, the last night of October is always one to look forward to celebrating. Halloween means kids running around in costumes, family and friends getting together and a chance talk with neighbors. What other holiday do you have an excuse to eat all the sugar you want and wear whatever you want? But Halloween wasn’t always the same celebration we experience today. In fact, Halloween’s origins date back thousands of years to the ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, pronounced sow-in.

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is the present day United Kingdom, Ireland and northern France, celebrated Samhain as their new year on November 1. This time marked the end of summer and harvest period and the beginning of the winter, which is a cold and dark time in this region of the world. The Celts associated the season with death and believed that on the night before Samhain the boundary between the living and the dead was distorted.

The Celts celebrated the night of October 31 when ghosts of the dead where believed to return to earth causing trouble and damaging the community’s food supply. The Celts observed the event by burning crops and sacrificing animals to the Celtic Gods in bonfires built by the Druids. They wore costumes, typically of animal skins and heads, to tell each others’ fortunes. And when the celebration was over, the Celts lit their hearth fires from the sacred bonfire to protect them during the coming months.

Romans soon conquered the territory occupied by the Celts and ruled over the land for 400 years. Over the course of time, two Roman festivals were combined with Samhain. One was called Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead. The second honored Pomona, the Roman Goddess of fruit and trees. Pomona’s symbol is the apple and was incorporated into the celebration of Samhain. This probably explains the modern day tradition of bobbing for apples, practiced on Halloween.

The Christian influence spread into the Celtic lands by the year 800. About this time, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All Saint’s Day as a time to honor saints and martyrs. Current belief is that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also referred to as All-hallows or All-Hallowmas, which was Middle English for All Saints' Day. Eventually, the night before it began to be called All-hallows Eve and then Halloween. In the year 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day to honor the dead. The holiday was celebrated similarly to Samhain with bonfires, parades and costumes such as angels, saints and devils. Together, the three celebrations became known as Hallowmas.

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. But because of rigid Protestant beliefs in early New England, the celebration of the holiday was limited. The beliefs of various European ethnic groups and the American Indians also began to mesh with the celebration of Halloween and an American version began to materialize. The first American celebrations included public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the deceased, tell fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween celebrations featured ghost stories and mischief. By the middle of the nineteenth century, autumn festivals were common but Halloween had not reached the entire country.

Immigrants flooded America in the second half of the 1800s, especially Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine who popularized Halloween nationally. Taking from both Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in halloween costumes, which has European and Celtic roots. These cultures believed they could avoid being recognized by the ghosts that came out on the night of Samhain by wearing masks. They would also place bowls of food outside their homes to satisfy the ghosts and prevent them from entering the home, which could be where trick-or-treating originated. Other sources point to beggars in Ireland who made their rounds to homes of the rich to ask for money and food. They would threaten them with “evil spirits” if they did not give.

By the 1920s and 30s, Halloween had become completely community-centered with parades and parties for the whole town. Vandalism also began to disrupt Halloween celebrations. That trend slowed in the 1950s and the holiday began to focus on the young due to the baby boom of the time. Trick-or-treating was revived as a way for the community to celebrate and a new American tradition was born. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second largest commercial holiday. GROVE STREET kids has a wonderful selection of new and gently used costumes for just the occasion!