Almost every child loves Halloween. It’s a time where you get to dress up in crazy costumes, go out at night, and, most importantly stuff you face with as many sweet things you can get your hands on. Sure, you might wake up with a sore stomach and bags under your eyes the next day, but you also wake up with loads of great memories. Some of my earliest childhood memories include expertly crafting witches costumes out of orange crepe paper and bin bags, I still remember the houses that used to give the best Halloween experiences, smoke machines and all.
But as I’ve gotten older Halloween has become time to hang out with friends. I’ve become the person giving out the sweets instead of receiving them (though of course I still eat as much chocolate as humanly possible!). I have to admit it’s kind of sad, seeing all the younger kids and wondering where all the time went. I have a feeling Halloween’s importance to me will slowly lessen to the point that it’s just that annoying day that children knock at your door.
But why? Why do the kids knock at the door? Why do we carve pumpkins? What’s the significance of that age old phrase “trick or treat!”?
We all seem to have slightly different answers to these questions. There are some households that actually “tricked” me as a child (whether it be with bowls of cold spaghetti or peeled grapes) but most just gave out the candy. Before I started researching for this article I thought I knew what Halloween was- well kind of. Like most of us I had some vague idea about ancient England and old celebrations to ward of spirits, but did I really know what it was? No. My knowledge of Halloween was purely based off a lifetime of trick or treating and great pumpkin carving expertise.
So what is it? We all know the basics. It is celebrated on the 31st of October every year and (much to lots of peoples annoyance, myself included) it is not a public holiday. Some of the more well readers might even know that Halloween is a shortened version of All Hallows Even. And this is where it gets complicated. This is the day before All Hallows Day which is better known as all saints day. This is catholic holiday to commemorate Christian saints and martyrs the celebration of which can be traced back to the middle ages.
Some of you may now be wondering about the ideas you had about Halloween before this. Perhaps you were imaging even further back to old rituals to ward off evil spirts? Well me too. But as it turns out the connections between Halloween and ancient England aren’t very strong.
There certainly was an ancient Irish festival called Samhain in which (as many of you might of heard) the physical and supernatural worlds were the closest and magical things could happen. But this festival is not really mentioned for a long period of time, until it is mentioned again in Anglo-Saxon times.
In fact the earliest documented customs relating to this event are in the middle ages. These include praying for souls of the dead, bonfire lighting to symbolise lost souls. However, there are two clear things that bear a stark resemblance to our modern day celebrations. Souling was when people went door to door with prayers for the dead in return for “soul cakes” and other goodies. There was also mumming which was originally associated with Christmas, included parading in costume.
We can all see the similarities to our own celebrations but they obviously have changed a lot in order to have developed into our pumpkin carving modern day events.
This change is mostly attributed to the Irish taking their traditions to America. These traditions are thought to have been commercialised until they evolved into the Halloween we see today, this is estimated to have happened at around the start of the 20th century.
So as it turns out Halloween is pretty modern, our celebrations are likely unrecognisable to people only 150 years ago. I’ll leave it to you to decide if Halloween can be traced back to an ancient festival because the truth is as much as we speculate we don’t really know. Perhaps it’s roots do really lie in dark ceremonies at a time when magic could happen or simply in a catholic holiday. The mystery is likely to remain just that, a mystery. Pretty apt when you think about it, a night scary films and the supernatural with a sens
