Halloween, a time of trick or treaters, pumpkin pie eaters, and horror movie theaters, second only in popularity to the giant that is Christmas. But Halloween, as one may imagine, hasn’t always been the mostly “for fun” kind of scary we see today.

Debates among historians and lack of details or direct evidence make the exact origin of the holiday vague and debatable, but most scholars believe the Celtic holiday of Samhain to be the best candidate. This was a holiday widely celebrated amongst the Celtic people who lived in what today we know as Ireland, some of Britain, and other parts of the British Isles, which lasted all the way up to the Medieval era. The name Samhain means “summer’s end”, referencing the changes in seasons. From October 31st to November 1st these people participated in several activities such as dancing and apple picking to celebrate the harvests, but also to ward off evil spirits, as people believed that this changing of seasons was the time when boundaries between the living and “other world” would be at the weakest. To ward them off, people would set offerings of food and drinks outside for these spirits, and people would light bonfires which they believed to scare off spirits and had a sort of soul cleansing ability to them. These people also wore masks to help scare off the spirits, as well as carve faces into turnips and place candles inside them.

Now it may not be as obvious as St Patrick’s Day, Easter, or Christmas, but Halloween was also influenced largely by Christianity. By the year 1000 A.D. the Holy Roman Empire had engulfed much of the British Isles under their influence and wished to convert the Celtics to Christianity. To achieve this, the church decided to move the holiday of All Souls Day or All Hallows Eve to the same date as Samhain, which caused a combination of Christian and Celtic traditions to mix together. All Souls Day already shared many things in common with Samhain such as bonfires, parades and dressing up in scary costumes, but it also brought its own traditions, mainly the new tradition where kids would go around to other houses and offer to send prayers of protection over the house in exchange for little treats known as soul cakes.

In the British colonies of America in the 1700s the celebration of Hallows Eve was extremely limited, most prominent, if much at all, in Maryland and the southern colonies. These celebrations from the British Isles eventually mixed with other European cultures and even some Native American cultures to create a distinctly American version of Hallows Eve, or as it began to be known, Halloween. Activities still included singing and dancing but also began to incorporate ghost stories and plays. The turnips often used to carve faces into on the holiday were replaced with the much easier to carve and more numerous pumpkins. Many further traditions of Samhain were brought over and emphasized during the influx of Irish immigrants during the Potato Famine in the mid-1800s.

As time progressed Americans became more and more involved in Halloween activities and began to dress up and go out to ask houses for food or money which eventually became known as “trick or treating”. Eventually, people began to anticipate these arrivals in costumes and began to purchase candy and other treats to hand out purposely. That term, trick or treating, was actually derived from another similar practice during the 1920s and 30s where young men would threaten to vandalize property if the person did not give them treats or money; a practice that eventually died out and was somewhat merged with the more passive tradition. The spirit of vandalization still lives on, one may argue, in the often frowned upon the

tradition of Mischief Night. It was around the time of these vandalizations in the 1930s and into the 1940s that Halloween became more secularized, removing itself from its Celtic and Christian origins, and became more about the average family community. This was especially important when World War II began and American communities needed to band together more than ever.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Modern Samhain celebration

Halloween now began to incorporate many famous traditions

such as parades and parties that were popular amongst adults and children alike, and by the 1950s, many local leaders had successfully limited the high amount of vandalism that was occurring in accordance with the Holiday. Halloween by this point had engulfed a majority of the country with its traditions and today it continues on not just in the U.S. but also in Canada where its origins are very similar, Mexico where it became somewhat synonymous with their Day of The Dead, and its home country of Ireland where many of the Samhain traditions are still alive.

So the next time you go out trick or treating, to a Halloween Party or even just sit down on your couch to enjoy this year’s scary horror flick, you can thank a small island just across the pond.