Encyclopedia
Halloween is an observance celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the
Western world, though most common in the
United States,
Puerto Rico,
Republic of Ireland, the
United Kingdom,
Canada, and with increasing popularity in
Australia and
New Zealand. Halloween originated in Ireland as the
pagan Celtic harvest festival, Samhain.
Irish,
Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.
The term
Halloween, and its older spelling
Hallowe'en, is shortened from
All-hallow-even, as it is the evening before
"All Hallows Day" . In
Ireland, the name was
All Hallows Eve , and though seldomly used today, it is still a well accepted label. Halloween was also sometimes called
All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern
European
pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries and given a Christian interpretation. In
Mexico November 1st and 2nd are celebrated as the "Día de Los Muertos" . Halloween is also called
Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the púca, a mischievous spirit. In Australia it is sometimes referred to as "mischief night", by locals.
Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when the spiritual world can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent .
Halloween in various countries
Ireland
Halloween is most popular in Ireland, where it originated, also known in
Irish Gaelic as "Oíche Samhain" or "Samhain Night". The Celts celebrated Halloween as Samhain, "End of Summer," a pastoral and agricultural
festival of fire, when the dead revisited the mortal world, and large communal bonfires would be lit to ward off evil spirits. In Ireland they continued to practice their deep-rooted, ancient pagan rites well after the arrival of Christianity in the middle of the sixth century.
Pope Gregory IV standardized the date of All Saints' Day, or All Hallows' Day, on November 1 to the entire Western Church in 835. There is no primary documentation that Gregory was aware of or reacting to
Samhain among the Celts in the selection of this date. See
Christian festival below. Because
Samhain had traditionally fallen the night before All Hallows', it eventually became known as All Hallows' Even' or Hallowe'en. While
Celts were happy to move their All Saints' Day from its earlier date of the 20th of April, they were unwilling to give up their existing festival of the dead and continued to celebrate
Samhain.
Historian Nicholas Rogers has written,
On Halloween night in present-day Ireland, adults and children dress up as creatures from the underworld , light bonfires, and enjoy spectacular fireworks displays. The children walk around knocking on the doors of neighbours, in order to gather fruit, nuts, and sweets for the Halloween festival. Salt was once sprinkled in the hair of the children to protect against evil spirits.
The houses are decorated by carving
pumpkins or
turnips into scary faces and other decorations. The traditional Halloween cake in Ireland is the barnbrack which is a fruit bread. Each member of the family gets a slice. Great interest is taken in the outcome as there is a piece of rag, a coin and a ring in each cake. If you get the rag then your financial future is doubtful. If you get the coin then you can look forward to a prosperous year. Getting the ring is a sure sign of impending romance or continued happiness.
United Kingdom
Adults in the UK often dress up and go to
fancy dress parties or pubs and clubs on Halloween night.
The
black cat was considered to be bad luck, whereas a white cat was considered to be good luck but in general the black cat is a lucky omen in the UK.
Halloween in Scotland consists chiefly of children going door to door "guising" dressing up and offering entertainment of various sorts in return for gifts.
In some parts of
Yorkshire, there is a similar festival called
Mischief Night which falls on the 4 November. Children do tricks on adults which range from the minor to more serious such as taking doors off their hinges on this night. The doors were also often thrown into ponds, or taken a long way away. In recent years these tricks have, in some cases, turned into severe acts of vandalism and criminal damage including streetfires and destruction of private property.
In England it is said that
elves rode on the backs of the villagers' cats. The cats had fun but the villagers did not and would lock their cats up so that the elves could not catch them.
Children were told not to sit in the circles of yellow and white flowers where
fairies have danced as they may be stolen by the fairies. It was also bad to sit under the hawthorn tree since fairies loved to dance on these and if they saw children their tempers would be prickled.
Throughout the United Kingdom children carve faces into pumpkins. They cut out designs into the vegetable. Then they place them on display in their windows to go along with the scary theme of Halloween.
Witchballs are also hung up in English homes, usually by the windows or front/back door and are said to glow if a witch passes by.
Bobbing for apples is also another English custom on halloween. Apples were put into a barrel that had been filled to the brim with water and an individual would have to catch an apple by catching them in their mouth with out using their hands. Once an apple had been caught, it was traditional to peel the apple and drop the peelings into the barrel to see if the peel would spell out a letter. Whatever letter the peeling formed itself into would be the first initial of the participant's true love.
In
Northern Ireland the event is celebrated with
Halloween Rhyming. Children walk around from door to door in their neighbourhood, bedecked in scarey costumes, carrying
Jack-o'-lanterns carved from
turnips . When the door is answered, the children perform a song or ryhme and in return are usually presented with sweets.
Other traditions include
apple ducking, fireworks, recounting of ghost stories and playing games such as
Hide 'n' Seek. Apple tarts are usually baked with a coin hidden inside, and large quantities of various types of nuts are eaten. Some of the more bold kids would also play a game called
Thunder and Lightning, which involves knocking
"like thunder" on a neighbours door, then running away
"like lightning".
Tradition is slowly changing however. Many kids will arrive at a door and merely exclaim, "Trick or treat", and money would be given out as well as, or in place of, sweets. Bonfires are less commonly lit for Halloween in Northern Ireland these days.
United States
Halloween did not become a holiday in America until the 19th century, where lingering Puritan tradition meant even
Christmas was scarcely observed before the 1800s. North American almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries make no mention of Halloween in their lists of holidays. The transatlantic migration of nearly two million Irish following the Irish Potato Famine brought the holiday and its customs to America. Scottish emigration from the
British Isles, primarily to Canada before 1870 and to the United States thereafter, brought that country's own version of the holiday to North America.
When the holiday was observed in 19th-century America, it was generally in three ways.
Scottish-American and
Irish-American societies held dinners and balls that celebrated their heritages, with perhaps a recitation of
Robert Burns' poem "Hallowe'en" or a telling of Irish legends, much as Columbus Day celebrations were more about
Italian-American heritage than Columbus. Home parties would center around children's activities, such as bobbing for apples and various
divination games, particularly about future romance. And finally, pranks and mischief were common on Halloween.
Commercial exploitation of Halloween in America did not begin until the 20th century. The earliest were perhaps Halloween postcards, which were most popular between 1905 and 1915, and featured hundreds of different designs. Dennison Manufacturing Company, which published its first Halloween catalog in 1909, and the Beistle Company were pioneers in commercially made Halloween decorations, particularly die-cut paper items. German manufacturers specialized in Halloween figurines that were exported to America in the period between the two world wars.
There is little primary documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween in America, or elsewhere, before 1900. Mass-produced Halloween costumes did not appear in stores until the 1950s, when trick-or-treating became a fixture of the holiday, although commercially made masks were available earlier.
In the United States, Halloween has become one of the most profitable holidays, next to Christmas, for retailers. In the 1990s many manufactures began producing a larger variety of Halloween yard decorations; prior to this a majority of decorations were homemade. Some of the most popular yard decorations are
jack-o'-lanterns,
scarecrows, witches, orange and purple string lights, inflatable decorations such as spiders, pumpkins, mummies, Draculas and Frankensteins, and
animatronic window and door decorations. Other popular decoration are foam
tombstones and gargoyles.
The National Confectioners Association reported in 2005 that 80 percent of adults planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters, and that 93 percent of children planned to go trick-or-treating..
Anoka, Minnesota, USA, the self-proclaimed "Halloween Capital of the World," celebrates with a large civic
parade.
Salem, Massachusetts, also has laid claim to the title, though Salem has tried to separate itself from its history of prosecuting
witchcraft. Despite that, the city does see a great deal of tourism surrounding the
Salem witch trials, especially around Halloween.
New York City hosts the United States' largest Halloween celebration, The Village Halloween Parade. Started by a
Greenwich Village mask maker in 1973, the parade now attracts over two million spectators and participants as well as roughly four million television viewers each year. It is the largest participatory parade in the country if not the world, encouraging spectators to march in the parade as well. It is also the largest annual parade held at night.
In many towns and cities, trick-or-treaters are welcomed by lighted
porch lights. In some large or crime-ridden cities, however, trick-or-treating is discouraged, forbidden, or restricted to staged trick-or-treating events within one or more of the cities'
shopping malls, in order to prevent potential acts of violence against trick-or-treaters.
Those living in the
country may hold Halloween parties. These parties usually involve games , a hayrack ride , and treats . Scary movies may also be watched. Normally, the childeren are picked up by their parents at pre-determined times. However, it is not uncommon for these parties to include sleepovers.
In many places, October 30 is known as Devil's Night or
Mischief Night and is a night in which people, usually teenagers, commit acts of
vandalism or
arson. Such acts can include covering houses in toilet paper or smashing raw eggs on people's cars.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction [i] novel [i] written by H. G. Wells [i] and published in ...
, a radio adaptation by
Orson Welles based upon
H. G. Wells'
classic novel of the same name, was performed by Mercury Theatre on the Air as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938 and the live broadcast reportedly frightened many listeners into believing that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.
Australia
Because Halloween was not celebrated in Britain it did not travel there with British colonization, but has some recognition due to American cultural media influences. Compared to the USA, Halloween is reasonably uncelebrated in Australia.
Symbols
Halloween's theme is spooky or scary things particularly involving death, magic, or mythical
monsters. Commonly-associated Halloween characters include
ghosts, aliens, ghouls,
witches,
bats,
owls,
crows,
vultures, haunted houses, pumpkinmen,
black cats,
spiders, goblins,
zombies, mummies,
skeletons,
werewolves, and
demons, as well as certain fictional figures like
Dracula and
Frankenstein's monster. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Halloween.
Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween. In modern Halloween images and products, purple,
green, and
red are also prominent.
Elements of the
autumn season, such as
pumpkins and
scarecrows, are also reflected in symbols of Halloween.
The carved
jack-o'-lantern, lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. Although there is a tradition in the
British Isles of carving a lantern from a
rutabaga, mangelwurzel, or
turnip, the practice was first named and associated with Halloween in North America, where the
pumpkin was available, and much larger and easier to carve. Many families that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face and place it on their home's doorstep after dark.
Neopagans of North America honor their ancestors on October 31. It was once believed that on this night any souls who had not yet passed into the paradise of the summer lands might return to wander the streets and visit their old homes once more.
Trick-or-treating and guising
The main event of modern US-style Halloween is
trick-or-treating, in which children dress up in
costume disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing each doorbell and yelling "trick or treat!" Although this resembles the older tradition of
guising in
Ireland and
Scotland, ritual begging on Halloween does not appear in English-speaking America until the 20th century, and may have developed independently. The occupants of the house will then hand out small
candies, miniature
chocolate bars, and sometimes even
soda pop. Some American homes will use sound effects and
fog machines to help set a spooky mood. Other house decoration themes are used to entertain younger visitors. Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases or shopping bags.
In
Ireland, great bonfires were lit throughout the breadth of the land. Young children in their guises were gladly received by the neighbors with some "fruit, apples and nuts and of course sweets" for the "Halloween Party", whilst older male siblings played innocent pranks on bewildered victims.
In
Scotland, children or
guisers are more likely to recite "The sky is blue, the grass is green, may we have our Halloween" instead of "trick or treat!". They visit neighbours in groups and must impress the members of the houses they visit with a song, poem, trick, joke or dance in order to earn their treats. Traditionally, nuts, oranges, apples and dried fruit were offered, though sometimes children would also earn a small amount of cash, usually a sixpence. Very small children often take part, for whom the experience of performing can be more terrifying than the ghosts outside.
Tricks play less of a role in modern Halloween, though Halloween night is often marked by vandalism such as soaping windows,
egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees. Before indoor plumbing was so widespread, tipping over or displacing
outhouses was a popular form of intimidation. Casting flour into the faces of feared neighbors was also done once upon a time.
Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as
vampires,
ghosts,
witches, and
devils. In recent years, it has become common for costumes to be based on themes other than traditional horror, such as dressing up as a character from a TV show or
movie, or choosing a recognizable face from the public sphere, such as a politician . In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, for example, costumes of Islamic terrorists,
firefighters,
police officers, and United States
military personnel became popular among children and adults. In 2004, an estimated 2.15 million children in the United States were expected to dress up as
Spider-Man, the year's most popular costume.
"'Trick-or-Treat for
UNICEF" has become a common sight during Halloween in North America. Started as a local event in a
Philadelphia suburb in 1950, and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $119 million for UNICEF since its inception.
BIGresearch conducted a survey for the National Retail Federation in the US and found that 53.3% of consumers planned to buy a costume for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average . An estimate of $3.3 billion was made for the holiday spending.
A child usually "grows out of" trick-or-treating by his or her teenage years. Trick-or-treating by teenagers is accepted, but generally discouraged with genial ribbing by those handing out candy. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween with
costume parties, staying home to give out candy, listening to Halloween music, or scaring people.
Visiting a haunted house or a
dark attraction are other
Halloween traditions. Notwithstanding the name, such events are not necessarily held in houses, nor are the edifices themselves necessarily regarded to possess actual ghosts. A variant of this is the haunted trail, where the public encounters supernatural-themed characters or presentations of scenes from horror films while following a trail through a heavily wooded area or field. Also, film studios often release horror films on or around the holiday in hopes of attracting people in search of scary entertainment. Recent examples include
Saw and a director's cut of
Ridley Scott's
Alien.
Games and other activities
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. The most common is dooking or bobbing for apples, in which
apples float in a tub or a large basin of
water; the participants must use their
teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drop the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated
scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very sticky face.
Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of
divination. In Puicíní , a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded person is seated in front of a table on which several saucers are placed. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then chooses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the player will die during the next year, a saucer containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc. In 19th-century Ireland, young women placed slugs in saucers sprinkled with flour. The wriggling of the slugs and the patterns subsequently left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of the women's future spouses.
In North America, unmarried women were frequently told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before they married, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on
greeting cards from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The telling of ghost stories and viewing of
horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Television specials with a Halloween theme, usually aimed at children, are commonly aired on or before the holiday while new horror films are often released theatrically before the holiday to take advantage of the atmosphere.
Foods
Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest,
Candy Apples are a common treat at Halloween. They are made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes then rolling them in nuts. At one time candy apples were a common treat given to children, but this practice rapidly waned after widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples that they would pass out to children. While there is evidence of such incidents occurring they are very rare and have never resulted in any serious injuries. Nonetheless, many parents were under the assumption that the practice was common. At the peak of this hysteria, some hospitals were offering to x-ray children's Halloween haul at no cost in order to look for such items. Almost all of the very few Halloween candy poisoning incidents on record involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy, while there are occasional reports of children sticking needles in their own candy more in an effort to get attention than cause any harm.
A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking of a barmbrack . This is a light
fruit cake into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love during the following year. See also
King cakeOther foods associated with the holiday:
Cultural history
Christian festival
Pope Boniface IV established an anniversary dedicated to the
Virgin Mary and the martyrs when he consecrated the
Pantheon on May 13, 609 . This Christian feast day was moved to November 1st from May 13th by
Pope Gregory III in the
eighth century in order to mark the dedication of the All Saints Chapel in Rome — establishing November 1st as All Saints Day and October 31st as All Hallows' Eve. Initially this change of date only applied to the diocese of Rome, but was extended to the rest of Western Christianity a century later by
Pope Gregory IV in an effort to standardize liturgical worship.
The feast day of All Souls Day, celebrated to commemorate those souls condemned temporarily to
Purgatory, was inaugurated by St Odilo, at the time the abbott of the influential
monastery at
Cluny, on November 2, 998.
Origin: Celtic observation of Samhain
According to what can be reconstructed of the beliefs of the ancient Celts, the bright half of the year ended around November 1 or on a Moon-phase near that date, a day referred to in modern Gaelic as Samhain . After the adoption of the Roman calendar with its fixed months, the date began to be celebrated independently of the Moon's phases.
As October 31st is the last day of the bright half of the year, the next day also meant the beginning of Winter, which the Celts often associated with human death. The Celts also believed that on October 31, the boundary separating the dead from the living became blurred.
The Celts' survival during the cold harsh winters, depended on the prophecies of their priests or
Druids. They believed that the presence of spirits would aid in the priests' abilities to make future predictions.
The exact customs observed in each Celtic region differ, but they generally involved the lighting of bonfires and the reinforcement of boundaries, across which malicious spirits might cross and threaten the community.
Like most observances around this season, warmth and comfort were emphasized, indulgence was not. Stores of preserved food were needed to last through the winter, not for parties.
Samhain mistaken as New Year
Popular literature over the last century has given birth to the near universal assumption that Samhain, now associated with the Roman Catholic theme and folkways of Hallowe'en, was the "Celtic New Year". Both the work of scholarly historians and Neopagan writers have begun to scrutinize this assertion. The historian Ronald Hutton, in his exhaustive study of the folk calendar of the British Isles points out that there are no references which attest to this usage earlier than the 18th century, neither in church nor civic records. Although it may be generally correct to refer to Samhain as "Summer's End", this point of descent into the year's darkness may require better proof for us to cite this "end" as also being a "beginning". On the other hand, there is a huge volume of proof of the western world, including late Celtia, as having begun their calendars either at the end of December or around March 25th at various periods back through and before Medieval times.
Norse Elven Blót
In the old
Norse religion an event believed to occur around the same time of the year as Halloween was the
álfablót , which involved sacrifices to the
elves and the blessing of food. The elves were powers connected to the ancestors, and it can be assumed that the blót related to a cult of the ancestors. The álfablót is also celebrated in the modern revival of Norse religion, Ásatrú.
Halloween traditions
Halloween traditions survive most accurately on the island of Ireland, where the last Monday of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week for mid-term, commonly called the Halloween Break. As a result Ireland and Northern Ireland are the only countries where children never have school on Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honored fashion.
The custom of
trick-or-treating resembles the European custom called souling, similar to the wassailing customs associated with
Yule. On November 2,
All Souls' Day, beggars would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" — square pieces of bread with currants. Christians would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits at the Samhain.
Souling died out in most areas of England by the mid-17th century, during the
Protestant Reformation. There is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in North America, and
trick-or-treating seems to have evolved there independently: the earliest report of ritual begging on Halloween is from 1915, and it did not become a widespread practice until the 1930s. Ritual begging on Halloween did not appear in the British Isles until the late 20th century, and imitates the American custom.
In Celtic parts of western
Brittany, Samhain is still heralded by the baking of
kornigou. Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld.
In the
Isle of Man where Halloween is known as
Hop-tu-Naa children carry
turnips instead of
pumpkins, and sing a song called
Jinnie the Witch.
Punkie Night
"Punkie Night" is observed on the last Thursday in October in the village of Hinton St. George in the
county of
Somerset in
England. On this night, children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out mangel-wurzels with faces carved into them. They bring these around the village, collecting money and singing the punkie song.
Punkie is derived from
pumpkin or
punk, meaning tinder.
Though the custom is only attested over the last century, and the mangel-wurzel itself was introduced into English agriculture in the late 18th century, "Punkie Night" appears to be much older even than the fable that now accounts for it. The story goes that the wives of Hinton St. George went looking for their wayward husbands at the fair held nearby at Chiselborough, the last Thursday in October, but first hollowed out mangel wurzels in order to make lanterns to light their way. The drunken husbands saw the eerie lights, thought they were "goolies" , and fled in terror. Children carry the punkies now. The event has spread since about 1960 to the neighboring village of Chiselborough.
Sources: on-line report from the
Western Gazette and a
National Geographic radio segment. Chiselborough Fair is memorialized by Fair Place in the village.
The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland reported that there was "a fair for horses and cattle on the last Thursday in October."
Mischief Night
The night before Halloween, known alternately as "Devil's Night", "Mizzie Night", "Gate Night", "Cabbage Night", "Mat Night", or "Goosie Night" is often associated with pranks or destructive activities performed by
adolescents. Some of the acts range from minor
vandalism to
theft , or even
arson. Many youths involved in Mischief Night would be considered too old for traditional
trick-or-treating. One of the most common wrong-doings is "egging", the act of throwing eggs at neighbors' houses, the eggs' yolk causing damage to the paint. Another common Mischief Night act is "T.P.ing", in which people's houses, lawns, and trees are covered in
toilet paper streamers.
In parts of northern England, "Mischievous Night" occurs on the 4th of November, the night before
Bonfire Night . It is celebrated in the same way, although minor vandalism often includes
fireworks, which appear in shops in the United Kingdom around this time for legitimate reasons — to set off alongside bonfires on the following night.
Religious viewpoints
The majority of Christians ascribe no doctrinal significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular entity devoted to celebrating imaginary spooks and handing out candy. The secular celebration of Halloween may loom larger in contemporary imagination than does
All Saints Day.
The mingling of Christian and Pagan traditions in the development of Halloween, and its real or assumed preoccupation with evil and the supernatural, have left some modern Christians uncertain of how they should react towards the holiday. Certain fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants, along with some
Eastern Orthodox Christians as well as conservative
Jews and
Muslims 
