For many, the evening of the 31st of October is a night full of fun and celebration, whether it is caring pumpkins or trick-or-treating through the neighbourhood, there is something for almost everyone to enjoy.
Few however, are aware of the origins of this night, so rich and steeped in traditions stretching back over thousands of years.
The earliest known origins of Halloween festivities have roots in the old Gaelic holiday of Samhain (pronounced sowin), which celebrates the end of summer and transition to their new year in winter and is thought to have originated around 2000 years ago.
This ancient festival has given rise to some of the most well known Halloween festivities seen today, among them is perhaps the most recognisable of all, trick-or-treating.
This trick-or-treating precursor was known as ‘guising’; in its early form, it is believed guising came about from people dressing up as dead spirits to try and hide themselves from the spirits they believed walked the earth during the festival.
This then gradually evolved into a more recognisable tradition of going to houses in costumes and performing songs for them (similar to modern-day carols), in exchange for food.
It would not be until much more recently however, in the early 20th century United States, that the trick-or-treating recognised today would come about.
Following a mass-migration from Ireland to North America in the wake of the great famine in the latter half of the 18th century, the popularity of Halloween spread on a national scale throughout the United States and Canada; It was here in North America where trick-or-treating really took off, when gangs of teenagers began to utilise the threat of practical jokes in order to leverage for food and sweets.
Along with trick-or-treating, this move to America brought about the advent of pumpkin carving, left wanting for turnips to carve, the Irish turned to the native pumpkin and began using that instead to cut out faces and images during Halloween, a practice designed to ward off the Stingy-Jack, an Irish legend who wandered earth after death.
Despite taking influence from both Nort America and Ireland, the history of Halloween draws from an even more eclectic background of tradition; during the Roman rule of the British Isles in the firs half of the first millennium the festival of Samhain merged with a Roman feast for the goddess Pomona (from the Latin ‘pomum’, meaning fruit), who was a nymph, believed to command the fruit and trees – specifically apples.
The celebrations of this goddess led to a activity ever-popular with children, apple-bobbing, with the apple being seen as symbols of her fertility, and the game was said do be able to predict marriages.
Skipping forward a few centuries to the 8th century, churches in western Europe began to fix All-Saints or Hallows day on the 1st of November, causing the vigil before All-Saints day, or ‘Hallows-eve’ to fall on the 31st of October, coinciding with the festival of Samhain and merging these two feats into a larger celebration as they are today and providing the modern-day name of Halloween for the feast.
So, for anyone partaking in parties, games and other fun this Halloween, spare a minute to consider the origins of these events because, beneath the ghoulish mask of this, sometime seemingly trivial festival, there really is a deep and wonderful history waiting to be unearthed.
