History of Halloween 🎃

Every year millions of people celebrate Halloween , party's, parades, costumes, candy pumpkins and more . But have you ever wondered were this celebration came from?

Today, Americans spend over $11 billion per year on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest holiday after Christmas 

Our modern Halloween traditions are  a combination of many different elements crafted together over the years , but it's primary origins can be traced back to the Celtic Pagan harvest festival called Samhain..

Early Halloween celebrations ware very  limited in the colony's because of the strict Protestant belief systems of the time. Halloween was more commonly recognized in Maryland and the southern colonies.

The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing

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Samhain.

Samhain (sow-in is an ancient Celtic festival marking the end of  the harvest season  and the beginning of winter, it's also the time of the year when the Vail between the living and the dead becomes weaker and spirits and monsters can roam free among the living.

This festival can be traced back at least two thousand years, thought the way its celebrated has changed a bit over time.

To ward off evil spirits, the Celts would built large bonfires, put on masks and costumes (often animal skins and wooden carved masks), to scare off or blend in with the spirit's. They would also offer food to appease the spirits. 

👹💀😈This was the the original trick or treating

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Early Colonial Halloween celebrations  often included telling ghost stories and family gatherings and even pranks.

Near the mid 1800s, the yearly fall festivities were becoming more common in America, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country just yet.

Original jack'o lantern..

In the second half of the 19th century Irish immigration helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nation wide 

Irish immigrants brought traditional Celtic customs to America including the jack'o lantern , originally carved  turnips or gourd's, but thanks to the abundance of  pumpkin found  in America it later became the vegetables of choice and is now one of the most recognizable Halloween symbol's.

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................🎃 Original Jack'o Lantern 🎃...........

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As part of the christianization of Europe in the 8th century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as All Saints' Day (also known as All Hallows' Day) to honor all Christian saints. The evening before, October 31, became known as All Hallows' Eve, or the eve of All Saints' Day. 

It also been called Devil's night, Hell night or mischief night but everyone knows it as Simply Halloween now..

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.

in 1879, about 200 boys in Kentucky stopped a train by laying a fake stuffed 'body' across the railroad tracks. In 1900, medical students at the University of Michigan stole a headless corpse from the anatomy lab and propped it up against the building’s front doors.

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In 1933, so many people were outraged when hundreds of teenage boys flipped over cars, sawed-off telephone poles and engaged in other acts of vandalism across the country. People began to refer to that year’s holiday as “Black Halloween,” similarly to the way they referred to the stock market crash four years earlier as “Black Tuesday.”

Some cities considered banning Halloween altogether. Although others responded by  organizing Halloween activities for young people so that they wouldn't turn to vandalism. They started to organize trick-or-treating, parties, costume parades and haunted house attractions to keep them busy.

Hanging old fur and strips of raw meat or liver on walls, where one feels his way through the dark  were instructed in a 1937 party pamphlet on how to create a “trail of terror.” “Weird moans and howls come from dark corners, damp sponges and hair nets hung from the ceiling to brush your  face as you pass by… Doorways are blockaded so that guests must crawl through a long dark tunnel.”

Haunted house attractions began to grow in popularity, one of the most we'll know is the 1969 haunted mansion at Disney land. Still very popular today.

Haunted or spooky public attractions already had some precedent in Europe. Starting in the 1800s, Marie Tussaud’s wax museum in London featured a “Chamber of Horrors” with decapitated figures from the French Revolution. In 1915, a British amusement ride manufacturer created an early haunted house, complete with dim lights, shaking floors and demonic screams.

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1915 Halloween celebrations.

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By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the 1950s baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodate

Despite vandalism a depression and a world war..between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with treats.

Halloween's pagan origins and association with ghost's, monsters, witchcraft and other spooky stuff has always been loosely tolerated by the more self proclaimed religious people especially during the 1980s "satanic panic"   claiming the holiday celebrates evil and glorified witchcraft and the occult. Church group's and know  it alls once again trid to ban the holiday and started pushing hell nights ( leading kids through a church version of a haunted house showing your afterlife burning in hell for celebrating "evil")

Large scale arson and destruction in the 1980s also had a very negative effect on the holiday.

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A few more common and less destructive   pranks and mischief during the early 1900-1930s included cow tipping, moving farm equipment, uprooting vegetables or even moving wagon's to a different location or putting them on top of roofs.

Another common prank is TPing a house, throwing roles of toilet paper all over the house and trees,though this is now considered littering and trespassing and may get you arrested if cought.

 

Souling is an ancient Irish and English tradition of going door to door and praying in exchange for food or sweet's, it's the early origins of trick or treating, Norway also has a version of this that takes place during Christmas instead of autumn called Julebukk it takes place on the days between Christmas and New Year's Day, Norwegians dress up in trolls witch's gnomes ect and go door-to-door to sing and perform for friends, neighbors, and family in exchange for food and drinks. It's a christmas-themed version of trick-or-treating..

Halloween is also when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits

They would also leave food outside by the door to keep ghosts from entering their homes (very early trick or treating).

Halloween Matchmaking - Fortune telling games 🔮🐈‍⬛

There are several old traditions and superstitious practice's done on Halloween that were mainly meant as a form of divination to help young women find their future husbands and reassuring them that they would some day be married. (It was also a party game for fun )

During the 1700's in Ireland, a matchmaking cook might hide a ring in the mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it.

In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding would be her match. (In some versions, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.)

Another tale claims that if a young woman ate a sugary treat made of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband.

Young women would also tosse apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry. At others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first settle down.

She could also light a small candle and star into a mirror to see if the face of her future husband would appear over her shoulder 

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👻Happy 🦇Halloween 🎃