The history of Halloween
The origins of Halloween can be traced back to a variety of traditions.
One story of the origin of Halloween is tied to a medieval European ritual of human sacrifice. According to the USA Today story, “Halloween has a Dark Past,” the holiday dates back to harvest festivals where farmers would build huge replicas of humans out of wicker and burn prisoners inside of them in order to have a good harvest that season.
According to www.wilstar.com, Oct. 31 was observed as the Celtic New Year, called Samhain. The Celts believed that on the evening of Samhain, the spirits of the people who died that year would return in search of living bodies to possess as an only hope of having an afterlife. The Celts would dress up in ghoulish costumes and make noise around their neighborhoods to scare away the spirits, an early start to the Halloween tradition of dressing in costume.
According to www.DCLS.org, Halloween started as a blend of two cultures: Celtic and Roman, after the Romans conquered the Celts in 43 A.D. The Roman Catholic Church observed Nov. 1 as a holy day called All Saint’s Day, or All Hallows Day. The evening before became known as All Hallows Eve, or Hallow Evening, which eventually came to be known as Halloween, according to the Web site.
According to www.openhere.com, the story of the jack-o’ Lantern comes from an old myth in Scotland about a man named Jack who used a hollowed turnip with a glowing coal inside as a light to find his way out of Hell.
Scottish children carried on this tradition for years by carrying turnips with candles in them during celebrations. It wasn’t until the Scots came to the United States when they were introduced to the pumpkin, which was easier to carve and made a better Jack-o’ lantern, according to the Web site.
Trick-or-treating is said to have originated from an old Christian tradition called “souling.” According to “The Paranormal History of Halloween” in X-Project Magazine, “souling” was a tradition used to keep the undead away by collecting small pieces of bread called soul cakes door to door.
Each soul cake represented a prayer that would be said by the group and each prayer would bring the souls of the deceased to leave the earth and find heaven more quickly.