HALLOWEEN ORIGINS-by Cristina Barreto

HALLOWEEN ORIGINS

What we nowadays know as Halloween started over 3000 years ago with the Celts, a warrior population who inhabited areas in Ireland, England, Scotland and France. On October 31^st, the Celts celebrated the end of their year with Samhain, a pagan festival. With European immigration to the United States of mainly of Irish Catholics in 1846, the tradition of Halloween arrived to America. When people talk about Halloween, we think about costumes, makeup, parties, sweets and children; but tradition states that Halloween was not always festive and cheerful. The rites that were practiced during the Halloween night had a purifying and religious character.

November 1st, the Celts began their year. With the arrival of Christianity, it became the feast of All Saints (and All Souls).

October 31^st is a date associated to the dead, lost souls and witches. These features are due to it’s proximity to the day of the dead, which the Catholic Church invented and commemorate on November 1^st. Like other festivals of the New Year, on this date dead people were back among the living. The Celts practiced human and animal sacrifices in honor of the god Samhain, lord of the death.

During the ceremony, the Celts were dressed with the skins of the sacrificed animals. With the bones and other parts of the sacrificed animals they made a ritual to know the future of the coming months.

In the United States, they began to celebrate this date at the small Catholic Irish communities in the mid-nineteenth century, and then, into the twentieth century, tradition spread to the rest of the world.

PUMPKINS

The custom of hollowing out and carving a pumpkin to make it a lamp called Jack-o-lantern has it’s origins in the eighteenth century’s Irish folklore. The legend says that Jack was a drinker, a gambler and notorious slacker who spent his days lying under an oak. In one occasion, Satan appeared trying to take him to hell. Jack challenged him to climb the oak. When the devil was in the tree, he carved a cross into the trunk to avert the devil to get off. Then, Jack made a deal with the devil: He would let the devil get off the oak if the devil never tempted him again to gambling or drinking.
When Jack died, he was not allowed into Heaven for their sins in life, but could not enter in the hell because he had tricked the devil. To compensate him, the devil gave him a light that was placed in a pumpkin to burn like a lamp for a long time.

TRICK-OR-TREATING

The practice spread in the United States as an attempt by the authorities to control the excesses that occurred during the night of Halloween. By the late nineteenth century, some sectors of the population felt the night of October 31^st as a fun time probably inspired by the Mischief Night, which was part of the Irish and Scottish culture. The fun was to tear down fences, soaping windows and sealing chimneys. They started offering sweets to the people who behaved well.