The history of Halloween: Why we celebrate and fun traditions to try

Halloween has been celebrated for a VERY long time. Like, thousands of years. So, it’s likely that present-day Halloween is a hodgepodge of many different customs and beliefs from multiple time periods and regions of the world. These are the ones that likely had the biggest influence on the holiday.

Samhain

One of the most popular theories about the history of Halloween is that it evolved from the Gaelic festival Samhain, which was celebrated by Celtic pagans. Samhain (pronounced SAH-win) marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. It is also considered a threshold festival, meaning the boundary between this world and “the Otherworld” is considered blurred. In other words, some believe that the veil is thin between the living and the dead.

Samhain included large feasts, gatherings, bonfires and offerings made to ward off evil spirits and to improve the chance of people and livestock surviving the winter. Some also believed that the souls of passed family members would return home for the night, so it was customary for there to be a place setting for them at the table.

A custom similar to trick-or-treating was referred to as “guising.” People dressed up, went from door to door, and chanted to get treats. Some believe that the costumes were meant to disguise celebrants from the spirits—particularly vengeful ones.

Divination, the practice of completing a kind of occultic ritual in order to see into the future or gain insight about a situation, was also a big part of Samhain, often using apples, nuts and/or bonfires. This is where bobbing for apples comes from! Whether or not someone managed to bite a bobbing apple was thought to mean all sorts of things about their love life.

Samhain is thought by some to have been Christianized by the church and renamed All Hallow’s Day.

All Hallow’s Day

Another popular theory is that Halloween is a Christian holiday independent of Samhain, purely connected to All Hallow’s Day or All Saints’ Day. It’s a time when Christians honor saints and pray for the recently departed to make it to heaven.

Traditions for this theory include ringing church bells, criers dressed in all black ringing hand bells and calling on Christians to remember passed souls, and baking and sharing soul cakes (a shortbread-like cookie flavoured with seasonal spices and etched with the symbol of the cross).

The act of “souling” is another theory for the origin of trick-or-treating, as groups of people would go from door to door to get soul cakes and, in return, pray for the passed loved ones in their community. Soul cakes were also sometimes left as an offering to the souls themselves.

Some say people used to carry lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips while they went souling, both to represent the souls of the dead and to ward off evil spirits. Other root vegetables were also used, and some were placed as decor to help lead visiting spirits back to their homes.

Similar to Samhain, dressing up in costume was often associated with warding off spirits. The tradition of costume parties might be connected to what some Christians called the danse macabre, when spirits allegedly rose from the dead on Hallow’s Eve for their own celebration.

When is Halloween celebrated?

Regardless of its origins, Halloween is always celebrated on the night of October 31 each year. This means that Halloween night can be a late night—for both kids AND parents—if it falls on a weekday.

This is part of the reason why schools, churches and family organizations in the U.S. often choose to organize their own Halloween celebrations (e.g., “Trunk-or-Treat”) the weekend before Halloween. It’s also a fun, safe way to prolong the festivities!

Varying religious influences altered the lore and customs of Halloween over time and, as with anything, different regions made it their own. The traditions mentioned so far were commonly practised in countries like Ireland, Scotland, England, France and Italy, and Paganism and Christianity (including Protestantism and Catholicism) have been the main religions with traditions mentioned.

But what about American Halloween?

The Puritans in New England were against the celebration of Halloween; it was only after Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the 19th century that Halloween became a widely celebrated holiday in America.

By the early 20th century, Americans of many social, racial and religious backgrounds celebrated Halloween, and by the late 20th century, some Americanized traditions had made their way back to Europe.

Some of the biggest changes include pumpkins and the phrase “trick-or-treat.” American pumpkins were embraced as the new jack-o’-lantern since they’re a lot bigger than turnips and other root vegetables that were used overseas, which makes them a whole lot easier to carve. As for “trick-or-treat,” we actually owe that phrase to Canada, as it first appeared in a Canadian newspaper in the 1920s. The term became extremely popular in both Canada and the U.S., and it eventually gained traction in Europe in the 1980s.

Where does “trick-or-treat" come from?

Halloween has long been associated with pranksters. A night where everyone might believe a little more in vengeful ghosts—plus access to scary costumes—equals the perfect recipe for troublemaking.

Also, some who went guising/souling/trick-or-treating threatened bad behaviour to those who didn’t offer sweets at the doorstep. Hence the phrase “trick-or-treat.”

Early Halloween costumes were meant to scare away evil spirits, so it makes sense that there’s a history of frightening monster get-ups. But as time went on and Halloween became more secularized, costumes weren’t always about being scary. They started to reflect pop culture, make political statements and offer members of the LGBTQ+ community a chance to dress for their gender identity.

Unfortunately, Halloween costumes also appropriated marginalized people and cultures. We still see culturally insensitive costumes mass-produced today, but thankfully, awareness around the issue continues to grow.

Early edible Halloween treats were usually something homemade, or at least organic. Even in the U.S., there’s a history of handing out caramel apples, cookies and popcorn balls. It wasn’t until the 1930s that candy companies seized the opportunity to dominate the holiday.

Here’s a quick guide to some of Halloween’s most popular icons and how they came about:

• Bats: The bonfires held during Samhain celebrations attracted bugs, which, in turn, attracted bats. This led to a strong association between bats and Halloween. 🦇
• Headstones, skeletons, and ghosts: One thing that has stayed constant about Halloween is its association with the dead, making these symbols no-brainers, so to speak.
• Vampires, witches, demons and other monsters: Depending on the most prominent beliefs of the time and place, different monsters have been popular symbols of Halloween. More Christian Halloween celebrations might have focused more on demons and witches or avoided monster imagery altogether, while secular celebrations included a wider array of monsters.