Halloween's Diverse History

The end of October—and with it, Halloween—is quickly approaching. As the nights get darker and houses get spookier, many people are excited to participate in classic Halloween traditions, like trick-or-treating or having costume parties. But where, exactly, did Halloween and those traditions really come from?

“Halloween is an example of a syncretic collection of traditions,” social studies teacher Kate Flugge said. It’s a great example of how many different cultures and religions interacted to produce a completely new holiday. In the second century, the pope, of the Roman Catholic church, started the observance of All Saints’ Day in May, to celebrate the saints without their own days. “[In 837 CE,] Pope Gregory III actually moved All Saints’ Day from May to November 1st, so All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Eve, is October 31,” said Flugge. It’s not proven, but the evidence suggests that the pope moved the date to coincide with the Celtic holiday of Samhain (pronounced Su-wen), which was their new year celebration and the end of the harvest season. “It was also a time that they felt that the barrier between the living and the dead was really thin,” Flugge said. The thin barrier is what led the Celtics to disguise themselves with ash or paint, and later masks, to hide from malevolent spirits that wanted to cause them harm. Later, in the spirit of Samhain and All Hallows’ Eve, people went door-to-door to trade a prayer for deceased loved ones for a small cake, which is what eventually evolved into trick-or-treating.

The celebrations of Samhain and All Hallows’ Eve eventually spread with St. Patrick to Ireland, which is where jack o’lanterns came from. The Irish originally carved turnips and put candles in them, but when settlers came to the Americas, where gourds and pumpkins were much more prevalent than turnips, they started to carve pumpkins instead.

Although many familiar traditions associated with Halloween were present earlier than the 1950s, the 1950s was when what is now known as Halloween first started to appear. America was becoming more and more commercialized, and many companies jumped on the chance to make money off of Halloween, which was when the holiday started to center around the children, rather than the religious or spiritual aspects of the original traditions it came from. Costumes became for fun, rather than to hide from vengeful spirits and trick-or-treating became kid-friendly, rather than religious. This is the familiar Halloween celebrated in America on October 31st, an amalgamation of Catholic, Celtic, and Irish traditions that is also somehow uniquely its own American tradition. “What’s interesting, too,” Flugge said, “is that those traditions that are associated with American culture… have now spread overseas as well, so [it’s] a tradition that came from the Old World over to the New World, then exported back to the Old World.”

Everyone celebrates Halloween differently, including Central students. Senior Aurora Marguccio said, “I usually celebrate [Halloween] with my younger siblings and go trick-or-treating around the block.” Junior Kalah Weber usually goes to her friend’s party on or around Halloween. She also enjoys dressing up. She said, “[As] of late, I really like dressing up as historical figures like Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie.” Senior Margaret Schmidt said, “I used to go trick or treating, but now I end up just hanging out with friends, dressing up, and watching a Halloween movie or two.” Flugge said, “We usually get costumes for our kids… and sometimes we’ll have the kids’ friends over for a movie like Transylvania.”

Halloween has changed so much over time, from All Hallows’ Eve and Samhain, religious holidays celebrating the deceased, to what it is now, a secular, commercialized holiday mostly aimed towards children. Its spirit, though, of celebrating the change of seasons, is still present in today’s Halloween traditions, and it’s likely not going anywhere in the next few decades.