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Our Halloween Countdown shows you exactly how much time is left until Halloween.
History of Halloween
The origins of Halloween date further back than one thousand years and are due to an extensive intertwining of folk, religious and seasonal customs. Halloween as we know it has its predecessor in a Celtic celebration in the pre-historic period which was then taken up by the Roman and Christian tradition, and again revisited in a modern attitude against the same social background and migration particularly in North America.
The first person to celebrate Halloween is the Gaelic Samhain (pronounced as sow-in) in modern day Ireland, Scotland and Britain. Samhain was a lack of harvest and transitioning into winter with a liminal period during which inclusion barriers between the living and the dead have been believed to be less. Crops and livestock were to be governed over the winter by people lighting bonfires, holding feasts and doing rites. Due to the spirituality and association with the unknown that caused the time period, individuals would also wear masks or costumes (long intended to cover up themselves or appease wandering spirits) and place food offerings at doorsteps or on altars.
Introduction of Roman festivals and traditions to the area of Celtic culture was executed when the Roman Empire invaded the area and blended the local tradition of Samhain. Particularly two Roman rites, Feralia, the end-of-October occasion of the remembrance of the dead and feasts in the honor of Pomona, the goddess of the fruit and fruit-trees, probably gave rise to later food connections with apples and bobbing-for-apples. This syncretism over time resulted in a cocktail of rites of season that comprised of Celtic, Roman and local.
With the growth of Christianity in Europe, the leadership in churches tried to find ways of absorbing and appropriating familiar pagan practices. By the early medieval the Church had designated All Hospital on November 1 (and the eve before it), and this day acquired the name Allen Hallows, and was known in English shortened to Halloween. The fact that All Saints’ and All Souls’ occurred at the very end of October leading to November, gave a Christian context through which the earlier activities of Samhain were superimposed: vigils, prayers of the dead, and formalized lamenting. Medieval Christians preserved and modified older beliefs and customs frequently the communities conducted so-linging groups where children gathered and went house by house giving prayers to the dead in return of being fed.
Through the medieval world to the early modern world, folk traditions still continued throughout Europe: mumming and guising (acts and masked visits), practical activities performed during autumn (harvest games, divination), and superstitions peculiar to a certain community. One of the symbols, the jack-o'-lantern, started as hollowed-out turnips, potatoes or beets in some parts of India and Scotland, lanterns carved to ward off the ghosts or honor the dead. Ireland and Scottish immigrants who took their traditions to North America in the 19 th century were introduced to pumpkins, insular to the Americas, which they found more appropriate to carve and pumpkin jack-o-lantern became ubiquitous.
In the United States, Halloween slowly evolved to be a more widespread and museum scale, mainly secular celebration. The customs were propagated and redistributed by immigration waves that took place in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. By mid 20th century two decades of encouragement of Halloween as family-friendly and harmless Halloween by communities and schools had transformed older traditions of souling and guising into house-to-house candy-gathering by children. The holiday also became more of a commercial affair: costumes, decorations and theme-related entertainment became a huge seasonal business.
The mixture of ancient and contemporary today is that healing communities gather together, don costumes and display decorations alongside remnants of the history of Samhain with its bonfires, masks and its mortality rites. Elsewhere it is a secular, mass festival of fun whooping and community and in other places still religious or local practices can play a part. That rich history roots-old festival, Roman and Christian modification, folk remnants and modern rediscovery is why Halloween is both prefixed and strictly modern.