Facts About Halloween Traditions
Halloween or Hallowe'en is celebrated on October 31st and is a very popular holiday in many parts of the world. It's the first of the year-end holidays, before Thanksgiving and December. Just like other popular holidays it has become very commercialized and many people do not know the facts about Halloween and how it originated.
Many of the traditions that are practiced today on Halloween were actually brought over to America by Irish immigrants who celebrated Samhain, a Celtic harvest festival. Everything that we do on Halloween is rooted in some way to ancient Celtic ritual no matter how removed today's celebrations may be from the original.
What's in a Name?
The facts about Halloween show that it was not always called Halloween. In fact some say the proper spelling should be Hallowe'en. The very first form of Halloween was the Celtic festival Samhain. Samhain signaled the end of the harvest season and a time when pagans stocked up on winter supplies and slaughtered livestock.
The name Halloween comes from the shortened version of the word All-hallow-even, a day that many European countries celebrated festivals similar to Samhain. This is why Halloween is also known as All Hallows Eve. However Samhain is the festival that is clearly the origin of Halloween with a central part of the festival to do with the belief that this was the day the lines between the living and the dead blurred.
Dressing Up
The facts about Halloween costumes come from this belief that Samhain was a day that the living and the dead crossed paths. The spirits of the dead were thought to be able to cause sickness and injury among people and damaged crops. Dressing up in costumes to mimic the dead spirits was thought to fool the spirits that the humans were actually dead. This has now evolved into a fun filled practice with people not caring very much about how scary or dead they look.
Pumpkins and Trick or Treating
Pumpkins are another practice that originates, according to the facts about Halloween, form Celtic traditions. In Ireland families carved lanterns out of turnips and rutabagas to keep away evil spirits. When Irish families moved to America they used pumpkins that were widely available and easier to carve. The facts about Halloween illustrate a practice in Ireland of going from house to house asking for food contributions for a feast in the town center. This is how the tradition of trick or treating started.
