The History of Halloween
In this informative article by Julia Wilson, we will be breaking down the ancient traditions of Oct. 31 and how they shaped the Halloween we know today.
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The History of halloween
The History of halloween
By Julia Wilson
By Julia Wilson
Halloween, an annual holiday celebrated on Oct. 31, is a night where children dress up in overpriced costumes, go house to house collecting candy from friendly strangers, and binge-watch scary movies. It is a seemingly innocent holiday and most people do not think twice about where this tradition came from. However, Halloween has a complicated history with bits and pieces pulled from many ancient cultures.
The word “Halloween” comes from the phrase All Hallows Eve and means “hallowed evening.” The Celts, originally from Western Europe, believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and dead was the thinnest during this time so the dead could return to the world they lived in before and exist with the live inhabitants. Deceased loved ones were expected, and warmly welcomed with their favorite foods, similar to the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. Every known civilization has some sort of ritual regarding what happens when people die and how to best honor those who have. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the modern holiday Halloween, most popular in the United States and Canada, can be traced back to Samhain, an Autumn Celtic festival. The three-day-long celebration marked the end of the harvest season and the coming of Winter. It is the day when our world and the one of the dead blend together as one.
The ritual of Samhain included stocking up with supplies for the winter, slaughtering cattle and discarding the bones in a fire (bone fires), which later became known as bonfires. The communities gathered and drank and feasted, while acknowledging the possibility of deceased visitors crashing the party. Humans were not the only ones yearning to see a loved one for the last time. Elves, fairies and dark spirits could also visit, and even ones who may have wronged in their human life. As explained by the Joukowsky Institute, Samhain was a time of “supernatural intensity” where the force of darkness was said to spill over the ancient mounds in the countryside. To avert the evil spirits, people painted their faces with ashes from bonfires, which eventually formed into wearing masks.
In the early 17th century, a new celebration emerged, commemorating the failed Gunpowder plot, when a group of Catholics attempted to assassinate Britain’s King James I. According to the World History Encyclopedia, Guy Fawkes’s name was tied to the event since he was found with explosives under the House of Lords, and the day of Nov. 5 was named Guy Fawkes day. On Guy Fawkes night, British people drink, eat, and light the sky with fireworks as they hang dummies that resemble unpopular people at the time, most commonly the Pope. (They still do that to this day!) The poor and the children have historically gone from house to house wearing masks, pushing an effigy replicating Guy Fawkes in a wheelbarrow. They have begged for money and sweets and threatened vandalism to those who refused them. Literally, trick or treat.
Another piece in history that shaped how we view Halloween today was the day after Oct. 31 in 1912, in Hiawatha, a village in Kansas. As stated by the World History Encyclopedia, a woman named Elizabeth Krebs had had enough of her garden, and the whole town, getting vandalized and destroyed every year by masked children. The next year, she organized a party where she hoped they would get exhausted and would not have enough energy left to wreak havoc on their neighbors. But she was wrong and, that year, the destruction occurred as it had every year before. She was determined to prevail, so in 1914, she hired a band, held a costume contest and parade, and it finally worked. Everyone loved this new tradition, and the news of Kreb’s success traveled far from Kansas to towns that established this new Halloween into their celebrations. It developed into costume contests, music, food, parades, sweet treats, and frightening decorations. Krebs is sometimes called the “mother of modern Halloween” although the tradition of going house to house asking for candy was founded centuries beforehand.
The Halloween we know today has been carefully sculpted from countless ancient cultures and traditions. These original customs have inspired the activities such as parades and costume wearing that we thoughtlessly engage in each October. Many of the traditional costumes worn, such as ghosts and werewolves, represent the universal fear of death, and embodying them for a night may help to calm that fear. Halloween throughout history could be a symbol of hope triumphing over fear, which may be what it meant to the Celts and other ancient civilizations many years ago.
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