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Halloween History: Legends and Facts Behind this Spooky Holiday

Modern Halloween costumes combine the sense of creativity, masquerade, spookiness and excitement that characterize the holiday itself. From trick-or-treating to Halloween dances and parties, the holiday has become a celebrated square in the quilt of our culture. Yet, only by understanding Halloween's history can we come to appreciate many of the rituals and traditions that we cherish today.

Here is an outline of the history of Halloween's and the Day of the Dead's traditions and symbols to help you improve your knowledge of this holiday.

Halloween History
Approximately 2,000 years ago, the Celts celebrated their New Year on the first of November. The end of summer marked the end of the harvest and the start of a cold, death-filled winter began. This was a meaningful and frightening time for the Celts, as they believed that New Year's Eve would diminish the lines of separation between the worlds of the living and the dead. Known as Samhain, this eve of the new year was a time when the ghosts of the dead returned to earth and wreaked havoc on the world of the living.

Legend has it that these ghosts destroyed crops, kidnapped the souls of the living and ruined towns. During this time, Druids (Celtic priests) became especially powerful, able to make precise predictions about the future. These predictions were like beacons of hope to the Celts, as they faced the ominous hardships of winter.

All hearth fires were extinguished, the village darkened, On the night of their New Year's Eve, the Druids built bonfires where the pagans burned crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic Gods. To hide from the ghosts of the dead, Celts wore costumes of animal heads and skins. After the celebration, the people borrowed fire from the holy bonfire to relight their own hearth fires, thinking that this new light and heat would give them protection.

Consequently, the costumes and ghosts of our modern traditions have roots that date back to those early of the Celtic times. Over the centuries, these early Halloween traditions became more and more layered. For instance, in the 800s, Pope Boniface IV proclaimed the first day of November to be All Saint's Day, or All-Hallows. October 31 st then came to be called All-Hallows Eve, later to become Halloween.

Halloween Traditions and Symbols
One of the most celebrated traditions of Halloween is trick-or-treating. Many historians believed this custom originated in the ninth century from a European tradition called souling. On the second day of November, All Soul's Day, Christians would travel from village to village begging for soul cakes (sweetened treats). In exchange for these treats, the beggars would pray for the souls of the donor's deceased relatives in an effort to assist the lingering souls to heaven. The modern day version of souling, of course, is trick-or-treating. However, instead of praying from the treat givers' dead relatives, the exchange spares the giver from being the target of a mischievous trick.

Another traditional part of the Halloween celebration is the jack-o-lantern, a symbol developed from the rich stories of Irish folklore about a trickster named Jack. Legend says that Jack tricked Satan into climbing a tree and then carved the symbol of the cross into the bark of that tree. Trapped and unable to descend, Satan agreed that if Jack let him down he would never try to trick Jack again. The deal was made.

However, when Jack died, he was not allowed into heaven because of his dark life and deals with Satan. Ironically, Jack was not allowed into Hell either because he had once tricked the devil. Satan left Jack with one lone ember to guide him through eternal blackness. Jack placed his ember within the protective walls of a carved out turnip so that it would glimmer as long as possible. When Irish immigrants came to America they replaced turnips with pumpkins, as there were many more pumpkins available.

Day of the Dead
The ancient Aztecs were the first to celebrate the Day of the Dead, choosing November 1st as the designated day. Although the holiday, filled with ghouls and skeletal images, may appear to be maudlin and scary, it is actually happy, upbeat celebration. Viewing death as an extension of life (specifically, as "eternal life"), the Day of the Dead is a great time of celebration and joy.

Now a national holiday in Mexico, this ghoulish celebration is also recognized within Mexican communities in the United States, as well as in the Philippines and Brazil. Just like Halloween is associated with sugary treats, so too does Day of the Dead have its own sugary tradition: confectionary delights decorated creatively with modern day variations boasting amaretto and chocolate.