Origins of Halloween

Ah, it’s that time of year again, when the biting autumn air starts to settle in as the leaves begin to turn to those beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow—but with autumn comes that hauntingly festive day known as Halloween where for the one night of the year, children take to the streets adorned in a variety of costumes, going door to door in request for candy or be threatened with the idea of waking up the next morning to find your home egged. But where exactly did the idea of Halloween first originate from?

Halloween has roots dating back to an ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain, which is actually pronounced sow-wen and not sam-hane as many believe. This festival marked the end of summer and harvest and the beginning of winter, a time of the year that is still often associated even today with death. The Celts, who lived some 2,000 years ago, believed that on the night of the new year, which they celebrated on November 1st, the veil between the world of the living and the dead became blurred. They celebrated Samhain on the night of October 31st, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to Earth. They also believed that the presence of the dead made it easier for Druids or Celtic priests to make predictions about the future, which for people entirely dependent on the natural world, were an important source of comfort for them during the long, dark winter months. To commemorate the event, Druids built large sacred bonfires where their people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifice to their Celtic deities. During this celebration, the Celts wore costumes consisting of animal heads and skins and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration’s concluded, they re lit their hearth fires, which they would have extinguished earlier that evening, using the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

The Roman Empire, by A.D. 43, had conquered a majority of the Celtic territory and over the course of the 400 years they ruled the Celtic lands, they combined two festivals of Roman origin with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first of those two festivals was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second of those two was a day meant to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. This is most likely to explain the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween as the symbol of Pomona is an apple.

On May 13 of 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, those who are killed in the name of Jesus Christ, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all martyrs and saints and moved its celebration from May 13th to November 1st. By at least the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread to Celtic lands where it began to gradually blend with older Celtic rituals. In the year 1000, the church made November 2nd All Souls Day, a day to honor the dead; this is widely believed today as the church’s attempt to replace the Celtic festival of Samhain with a church-related, sanctioned holiday instead. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. All Saints Day was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas, from the Middle English Alholownesse meaning All Saints Day, and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in Celtic religion, they began to call it All-Hallows Eve and eventually Halloween.