What Is Halloween, halloween baked goods Why Do We Celebrate It? 0AWhat Is Halloween, and Why Do We Celebrate It?

Every editorial product is independently selected, though we may be compensated or receive an affiliate commission if you buy something through our links. Ratings and prices are accurate and items are in stock as of time of publication. Halloween wasn’t always about carving pumpkins and collecting candy. As it exists today in the United States, Halloween is a holiday when we can all indulge in the darker, creepier side of life and eat loads of candy. It’s a lot of fun, a little spooky and anything but serious. Historically, however, the holiday was religious in nature and extremely significant to the culture of the people who celebrated it. Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, published in 1820, was one of the first works of fiction centered around Halloween.

In America, Halloween is always celebrated on October 31. Countries that celebrate Halloween as we do, like Canada, share the same day. However, not everyone is as Halloween obsessed as Americans. In England, Halloween is generally not celebrated at all. That was a result of the Protestant Reformation. Guy Fawkes Day, which revolves around the execution of an infamous traitor and features bonfires, burning effigies and fireworks. In Mexico, people celebrate Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

While it takes place from October 31 to November 2, it is very different in tone from Halloween. Yes, people do dress up as colorful skeletons and celebrate in the streets, but the point is to honor the dead and welcome their spirits back to earth, not to be fearful of them. Scotland and Ireland also celebrate Halloween on October 31. What are the ancient origins of Halloween? Halloween originates in Gaelic and Celtic rituals dating back at least 2,000 years, and it’s from these that we get the date and many of the ways we celebrate the holiday.

The Gaelic festival of Samhain was traditionally held on November 1, to mark the official end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. We can also get clues about Halloween’s ancient origins by looking at its name. The first records of it being used this way date back to around 1555 AD. All Saints’ Day started with early Christianity. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III moved the feast of All Martyrs’ Day from May 13 to November 1 and turned it into All Saints’ Day.

The evening before was subsequently called All Hallows’ Eve, and then Halloween. Halloween also has connections to the ancient Roman celebration for Pomona, the goddess of harvest and abundance. How has Halloween changed throughout history? The ancients believed that on this day, the line between the living and the spiritual realm was blurred—meaning that ghosts from beyond could visit the living, and monsters could find their way into people’s houses. Those celebrating aimed to ward off as much evil as possible. They held special rites to keep monsters, witches and evil fairies at bay. They told tales about mythological heroes and the underworld.

As Christianity became more popular, it added some of the Catholic holidays that fall right around Halloween, mixing the religious and pagan traditions. To help further the transition from paganism to Catholicism. All Souls’ Day embraced many of Samhain’s celebrations, including bonfires, parades and costumes—though now people mainly dressed up as saints, angels and devils. The most popular Halloween costume in 2021 was a witch. Why do we still celebrate Halloween? Most of us aren’t afraid of being eaten by monsters, nor do we feel the need to celebrate the harvest, so why has Halloween stuck around? Halloween was a tough sell in early Colonial America because of the Puritans’ strict religious beliefs, says Sterling-Vete.

However, the holiday remained popular in less-religious circles, and as more and more Europeans arrived and mingled with the Native Americans, traditions evolved even further. Halloween festivities meshed with autumn festivals and featured celebratory public events, singing and dancing, spooky stories and pranks. But it wasn’t until the second half of the 19th century that Halloween really became popular in the United States. Irish immigrants escaping the Potato Famine brought their ideas and traditions about Halloween along with them. How did Halloween become the holiday we celebrate today? In this new whimsical context, Americans adopted the Celtic tradition of dressing up and transformed it into what we now know as trick-or-treating.

By the 1930s, Halloween became almost completely secularized, while All Saints’ Day became more of a religious holiday. 10 billion during the 2021 Halloween season. What are the top Halloween traditions? How is Halloween celebrated these days? Costumes, parties, toys and candy are some of the most popular ways, but there are lots of fun Halloween traditions.

Around 1895, it became traditional to carve jack-o’-lanterns with ghoulish faces. Trick-or-treating Roaming bands of costumed kiddos going door-to-door begging for candy is probably the most time-honored Halloween tradition. This custom—directly related to what is called guising, because of the disguises, or costumes, worn to hide from evil spirits—can trace its origins back to 16th century Scotland, says Sterling-Vete. Decorating with skulls, skeletons and ghosts Fake human bones are often displayed in silly ways on Halloween, but they’re a remnant of the ancients’ very serious fixation on the dead returning on October 31—whether in spirit or with whatever is left of their mortal bodies.

The imagery of the skull may also refer to the Christian tradition of Golgotha, or Calvary, the hill on which Jesus was crucified. Halloween origin story, and they live on today in the form of black cats, witches and other things seen as omens or personifications of that evil. On Halloween, scarecrows aren’t just used to scare birds away but evil spirits as well. Bobbing for apples was originally a Roman party game and not related to Halloween at all, but rather true love. Apples were placed in water or hung from a string, and each was given the name of a single man or woman. Halloween parties What’s more essential to a holiday celebration than a party? Halloween parties range in size from a family at home, to schoolwide bashes with parades, to community extravaganzas.