My mum won’t let me go trick or treating tonight because she thinks that Halloween is evil.
Is it?
It is true that Halloween is largely a recycled pagan celebration (I don’t see any reason to hide it)—just look up “Halloween” in any Encyclopedia.
For instance, the Encarta Encyclopedia says: “Many of the ancient peoples of Europe marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn. The most important of these holidays to influence later Halloween customs was Samhain [actually pronounced more like sah-win or sah-veen; it means “Summer’s end”] a holiday observed by the ancient Celts, a tribal people who inhabited most of Western and Central Europe in the first millennium BC . . . Samhain began at sundown on October 31 and extended into the following day. According to the Celtic pagan religion, known as Druidism, the spirits of those who had died in the preceding year roamed the earth on Samhain evening. The Celts sought to ward off these spirits with offerings of food and drink. The Celts also built bonfires at sacred hilltop sites and performed rituals, often involving human and animal sacrifices, to honor Druid deities.”
And so, we find that the ancient Celtic culture believed that on the evening of October 31, the barriers between the human and supernatural realms were weakened, and it was thought to be the most favorable time for divinations and fortune telling (for the Druids to make predictions about the future). I read that during the celebration, they wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and this seems to be where the tradition of dressing up for Halloween came from.
Well, I like history, so let me just give you a bit more. By A.D. 43, the Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. The Romans then blended local Samhain customs with their own pagan harvest festival honoring Pomona, goddess of fruit trees. Some scholars have suggested that the game of bobbing for apples derives from this. Some believe bobbing for apples was originally a form of divination (fortune telling) to learn of future marriages—the first person to bite an apple was predicted to be the first to marry in the coming year. And there are other ideas about bobbing for apples regarding its pagan origin.
And then the Catholic church got a hold of the holiday. As the Encarta Encyclopedia further says: “The Roman Catholic Church often incorporated modified versions of older religious traditions in order to win converts. For example, Pope Gregory IV sought to replace Samhain with All Saints’ Day in 835. All Souls’ Day, closer in spirit to Samhain and modern Halloween, was first instituted at a French monastery in 998 and quickly spread throughout Europe.”
And so, in an attempt to Christianize this pagan event with a church-sanctioned holiday, they moved the old Christian feast of All Saints’ Day (a day commemorating all the “saints” of the church) from May 13 to November 1. And November 2 was later made All Soul’s Day (a day to commemorate all the departed who are thought to be in purgatory). And so October 31 was set aside as a holy evening, known as All Hallows Eve (“hallows” speaking of the holy ones or saints—the evening before All Saints’ Day), which then became “Halloween.” And churches began staging pageants in which people dressed up as saints or demons—which seems to have added to the dressing up tradition.
Trick-or-treating most likely dates back to early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor people would beg for food. Families would then give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. Children eventually took on this tradition, known as “going-a-souling” or “souling” and they would visit houses in their neighborhood for drinks, food, and money (a practice mentioned in Shakespear’s writings).
OK, what about jack o’ lanterns? Well, people have been making jack o’ lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish folktale about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack.” He was not allowed into either heaven or hell because of his trickery. So, according to the story, the devil gave Jack a glowing piece of coal placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to light his way at night as he roamed the face of the earth. He was later called “Jack of the Lantern” which was shortened to “Jack o’ Lantern.” So, in Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into large turnips and placing them in windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o’lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States, and they soon found that pumpkins made much better jack o’lanterns than large turnips.
It was pretty much rejected at first, but the holiday had a rebirth in America between the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of the influx of Irish immigrants (many fleeing Ireland’s potato famine) who came over and helped popularize Halloween traditions. They brought with them traditions that combined features of the Celtic and Christian holidays. But as belief in many of the old superstitions waned during the late 19th century, Halloween was increasingly regarded as a children’s holiday.