What’s the origin and history of Halloween?

2 Comments

1. Fiona says:

   May 2, 2010 at 2:55 am

   Halloween (Hallowe’en, Hallowtide, Hallowmas, Allhallow-even) is short for "All Hallows Even" which means "All Saints Eve". It is the eve before All Saints Day, a Catholic day to honor all the saints who do not already have a feast day of their own. All Saints Day was originally celebrated on May 13 when Pope Boniface IV rededicated the Pantheon in Rome to ‘St. Mary and All Martyrs’ in 609 A.D. It was moved to November 1 in the 8th century when Pope Gregory III dedicated St. Peter’s Basilica to all the saints. In the 10th or 11th century A.D. All Souls Day was added as a day to pray for the souls in purgatory and attend a requiem mass to honor the Christian dead.

   Folk customs surrounding All Souls are the origin of the belief that the dead return on Halloween. People would visit cemeteries, decorate relatives’ graves, and leave food offerings for the dead. Pagan Roman customs may have influenced the practice of offering food to the dead. During Parentalia and Feralia, which were celebrated in February, Romans offered food and flowers at gravesites. Also, All Saints original date of May 13 coincided with the final day of Lemuria which was another festival of the dead in pre-Christian Rome (where All Saints originated). Lemuria involved beans as part of the rites and today a treat called "beans of the dead" is popular in Italy for All Saints.

   Samhain had an influence on All Hallows in Ireland, and that is the version that turned into what we know as Halloween today. Samhain in the medeival Irish sagas and records was a day of great importance. It was a day of feasting, games, drinking, great battles in some accounts and a peaceful feast in others, heroic feats, and interaction between mortals and the realm of the faires (divine or semi-divine beings who could be dangerous, and not the little creatures with wings that we think of today). In Ireland the customs that are associated with Halloween are the same as the ones mentioned in the sagas as being part of Samhain: divination, partying, the belief that supernatural beings mingle with or harass humans on this night. The word ‘Samhain’ has gone through numerous changes and spellings (Samuin, Saman, Samain, Samhuinn, Samhna) and its etymological evolution is somewhat confusing. Today ‘Samhain’ is the Irish word for the month of November, although it used to mean November 1 or the feast day of Samhain. Oiche Shamnha is Irish for Halloween; it means the "eve of Samhain" or the "eve of November 1".

   All Saints and All Souls celebrations in the Americas can be traced back to the arrival of the Spanish missionaries and French Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Native Americans adopted these Christian traditions and combined them with remnants of their native celebrations. These feast days are still celebrated today.

   In the nineteenth century Irish and Scottish immigrants settled in the United States and brought their Halloween customs with them. Unlike the more solemn, purely Catholic observance of All Saints/All Souls Day typical in continental Europe, the Irish version was more of a fun harvest festival in nature. Victorian-era Americans adopted the holiday with enthusiasm.

   Halloween is now considered an American holiday, even though it is a bank holiday in Ireland. In many parts of Europe All Saints is still celebrated in its traditional Catholic form, in other places modern Halloween is celebrated side-by-side with All Saints, and in places like Mexico and South America it has become a separate and distinct holiday (that has retained a strong Catholic flavor). In many European and South American countries, as well as Mexico, All Saints is a public holiday.

   Here you go:
   The practice of actually saying "trick-or-treat" is purely North American and the earliest mention comes from newspapers from the 1920′s (1930′s in the U.S.). Despite the fact that there are ample mentions of Halloween vandalism prior to the advent of trick-or-treat, people are divided on whether it was invented to curb this vandalism. Some people in Canada and the United States practiced some other begging practices prior to this, but those appear to have been more localized traditions. They were practiced at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween and included belsnickling and guising. Although the Irish and Scottish brought their version of All Hallows (Hallowe’en) over to the United States in the mid-19th century they didn’t bring begging customs with them. There were, however, begging and costuming practices that had taken place in parts of Europe since the middle ages: guising, mumming, wassailing, belsnickling, and souling. Souling was an All Saints/All Souls (Hallowe’en) custom where children would offer prayers for the souls in pugatory in exchange for "soul cakes". If the ancient Celts dressed in costumes or practiced begging customs we have no evidence of it. There also weren’t any begging or costuming practices associated with the original All Saints.

   Here is the actual 1927 article mentioning trick or treat in Canada. You will have to zoom in – there is an article about a bonfire and one about trick or treat:
   http://lethbridgeherald.newspaperarchive.com/cache2/68673276.pdf

   And here are some stories about similar practices in the U.S. for Christmas and Thanksgiving:
   http://www.winchesterstar.com/article_details.php?ArticleID=3480
   http://www.greenpt.com/anytngftkg.htm
   References :
2. hey says:

   May 2, 2010 at 3:42 am

   Halloween has a lot of history behind it.
   Try this:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
   or…
   Look for cool videos here:
   http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween
   References :