Halloween is a tradition celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets, fruit, and other treats. It is celebrated in parts of the Western world, though most commonly in the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Puerto Rico, and with increasing popularity in Australia, New Zealand, as well as the Philippines. Halloween originated as a Pagan festival among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain, with Irish, Scots, Welsh and other immigrants transporting 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-hallows-eve, as it is the evening before "All Hallows' Day"[1] (also known as "All Saints' Day"). In Ireland, the name was All Hallows' Eve (often shortened to Hallow Eve), and though seldom used today, it is still a well-accepted label. The festival is also known as Samhain or Oíche Shamhna to the Irish, Calan Gaeaf to the Welsh, Allantide to the Cornish & Hop-tu-Naa to the Manx. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Pope Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints Day to November 1. Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the púca, a mischievous spirit.
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 (e.g. Catalan mythology about witches, Irish tales of the Sídhe).
Contents [hide]
1 Halloween around the world
1.1 Ireland
1.2 Scotland
1.3 England
1.4 North America
1.5 Australia and New Zealand
1.6 Bonaire
2 Symbols
3 Trick-or-treating and guising
4 Games and other activities
5 Foods
6 Cultural history
6.1 Halloween and All Saints' Day
6.2 Origin: Celtic observation of Samhain
6.2.1 Samhain mistaken as New Year
6.3 Norse Elven Blót
7 Halloween traditions
8 Religious viewpoints
9 See also
10 References
11 External links
[edit] Halloween around the world
Snap-Apple Night by Daniel Maclise portrays a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The young people on the left play various divination games about future romance, while children on the right bob for apples. A couple in the center play snap-apple with an apple skewered on tongs hanging from a string.
Halloween in Dublin 2003
[edit] Ireland
Halloween is most popular in Ireland, where it is said to have originated, also known in Irish Gaelic as "Oíche Shamhna" or "Samhain Night". The Celts celebrated Halloween as Samhain (pronounced /ˈsˠaunʲ/), "End of Summer", a pastoral and agricultural fire festival or feast, when the dead revisited the mortal world, and large communal bonfires would be lit to ward off evil spirits. (See Origin: Celtic observation of Samhain below.) 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. 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, ("...the Felire of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght prove that the early medieval churches celebrated the feast of All Saints upon 20 April.")[2] they were unwilling to give up their existing festival of the dead and continued to celebrate Samhain.
Unfortunately, there is frustratingly little primary documentation of how Halloween was celebrated in preindustrial Ireland. Historian Nicholas Rogers has written,
It is not always easy to track the development of Halloween in Ireland and Scotland from the mid-seventeenth century, largely because one has to trace ritual practices from [modern] folkloric evidence that do not necessarily reflect how the holiday might have changed; these rituals may not be "authentic" or "timeless" examples of preindustrial times.[3]
On Halloween night in present-day Ireland, adults and children dress up as creatures from the underworld (ghosts, ghouls, zombies, witches, goblins), 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 (really rutabagas but called turnips in ireland) into scary faces and other decorations. Lights are then placed in side the carved head to help light and decorate.
The traditional Halloween cake in Ireland is the barmbrack 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. Usually these days only the ring is included in bought barn bracs.
Games are played like 'ducking/bobbing for apples' where apples, monkey nuts (peanuts) and other nuts and fruit and some small coins are put into a basin of water. The apples and monkey nuts float. Coins are harder to catch as they sink. You catch what you can using only your month and no hands. Everyone takes turns. The scottish and english have taken this tradition into their customs. Its named ducking after the fast movement of your head under the water to try to get something without having your head under the water too long.
Another game involves trying to eat an apple on a string without using your hands.
Children also have a week-long break from school for Halloween, and the last Monday in October is a public holiday given for Halloween even though they quite often don't fall on the same day. See Public holidays in the Republic of Ireland.
[edit] Scotland
Scotland, having a shared Gaelic culture and language with Ireland, has celebrated the festival of Samhain robustly for centuries. Robert Burns portrayed the varied customs in his poem "Hallowe'en" (1785).
Hallowe'en, known in Scottish Gaelic as "Oidhche Shamhna", consists chiefly of children going door to door "guising" (or "galoshin" on the south bank of the lower Clyde), dressing up and offering entertainment of various sorts in return for gifts. Popular childrens' games played on this evening include "dookin" for apples (trying to spear an apple in a bucket of water using only a fork held in one's mouth), and eating a "tattie scone" (a traditional potato cake), smeared in treacle, whilst blindfolded).
[edit] England
The same could not be said for most of England in the post-Roman era. The Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries AD pushed the native Celts north and westward in Britain, to present-day Wales and Northern England, taking the festival with them. All Saints Day (All Hallows Day) became fixed on the 1st of November in 835, and All Souls Day on the 2nd of November circa 998. On All Souls Eve, families sat up, and little "soul cakes" were eaten by everyone. At the stroke of midnight there was silence with candles burning in every room to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes and a glass of wine on the table to refresh them. The tradition continued in some areas of Northern England as late as the 1930s, with children going from door to door "souling" for cakes or money, by singing a song. The English Reformation in the 16th century de-emphasised holidays like All Hallows Day and its associated eve. With the rise of Guy Fawkes Night celebrations in 17th century England, many Hallowe'en traditions, especially the building of bonfires, were transferred to 5 November, only five days from the old. Hallowe'en celebrations in England have again become popular when in the 1980s, American families living in London reintroduced Hallowe'en traditions such as pumpkin faces (and the US trick-or-treat) uncommon in the UK and Ireland.[citation needed]
Today, adults often dress up and go to fancy dress parties or pubs and clubs on Hallowe'en night.
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 garden gates off their hinges on this night. The gates 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 street fires and destruction of private property.[4]
Throughout England, as in the rest of the British Isles, children carve faces or designs into pumpkins.[5] Then they place them on display in their windows to go along with the scary theme of Hallowe'en. (See article Jack-o'-lantern.)
Witch balls 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 custom on Hallowe'en, similar to the Scottish "dookin". 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 without 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.
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. Bolder children might 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 children will arrive at a door and merely exclaim, "Trick or treat", and money is given out, as well as, or in place of, sweets. Bonfires are less commonly lit for Hallowe'en in Northern Ireland these days.
[edit] North America
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.[6] The transatlantic migration of nearly two million Irish following the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1849) 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 "Halloween" 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.
The commercialization of Halloween in America did not begin until the 20th century, beginning perhaps with Halloween postcards, which were most popular between 1905 and 1915, and featured hundreds of different designs.[7] Dennison Manufacturing Company, which published its first Hallowe'en catalog in 1909, and the Beistle Company were pioneers in commercially made Halloween decorations, particularly die-cut paper items.[8][9] 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.[10] 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 the sixth most profitable holiday (after Christmas, Mother's Day, Valentines Day, Easter, and Father's Day) for retailers.[11] In the 1990s many manufacturers 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, vampires and other monstrous creatures, and animatronic window and door decorations. Other popular decoration are foam tombstones and gargoyles. The sale of candy and costumes are also extremely important during this time period. Halloween is marketed not just to children but also to adults. According to the National Retail Federation, the most popular Halloween costumes for adults are, in order: witch, pirate, vampire, cat, and clown.[12] On many college campuses, Halloween is a major celebration, with the Friday and Saturday nearest October 31 hosting many costume parties.
The National Confectioners Association reported, in 2005, that 80 percent of adults planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters,[13] and that 93 percent of children planned to go trick-or-treating.[14]
Anoka, Minnesota, 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 persecuting witchcraft. Despite that, the city does see a great deal of tourism surrounding the Salem witch trials, especially around Halloween. Nearby Keene, New Hampshire, hosts the annual Pumpkin Fest each October which previously held the record for most lit jack-o'-lanterns at one time and place.
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 the state of Utah and throughout the world where members of the Mormon faith reside, Halloween is an occasion when the trunks of cars are decorated and the cars parked at the church where "trick-or-treaters" go from trunk to trunk and there are prizes for those best decorated, a phenomenon known as "trunk-or-treating" [citation needed]. Everyone brings treats e.g. hot apple cider, popcorn, baked goods, chili and hotdogs, to share. It is seen as an opportunity for the community to socialize.
In many towns and cities, trick-or-treaters are welcomed by lighted porch lights and jack-o'-lanterns. 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. Even where crime is not an issue, many towns in the US have established specific hours where trick-or-treating is permitted, e.g. 5-7 pm or 5-8 pm, to discourage late-night trick-or-treating.
Those living in the country may hold Halloween parties, often with a bonfire or, in some years, the older Irish custom of building two bonfires, with the celebrants passing between them. These parties usually involve games (often traditional games like bobbing for apples, searching for candy in a similar manner to Easter egg hunting, or a snipe hunt), a haunted hayride (often accompanied by a scary story and one or more masked and costumed people hiding in the dark to jump out and scare the riders), and treats (usually a bag of candy and/or homemade treats). Scary movies may also be watched. Normally, the children are picked up by their parents at pre-determined times. However, it is not uncommon for these parties to include sleepovers.
In areas with a large Mexican population, Halloween has often merged with celebrations of "Dia De Los Muertos", the Day of the Dead.
[edit] Australia and New Zealand
Because Halloween was not celebrated in England before the twentieth century, it did not travel to Australia and New Zealand with British colonization, but it has some recognition due to American cultural media influences.[15] Compared to the United States, Halloween is reasonably uncelebrated in Australia and New Zealand.[16][17]
[edit] Bonaire
The children of the largest town in Bonaire all gather together on Hallowe'en day.In the island of Bonaire, all the children of a town gather together in a group, and unlike most places, instead of trick-or-treating at people's houses, they trick-or-treat for sweets in the town shops.
[edit] Symbols
Jack-o'-lanterns may be carved with funny faces.The imagery surrounding Hallowe'en is largely an amalgamation of the Halloween season itself, nearly a century of work from American filmmakers and graphic artists, and a rather commercialized take on the dark,diaria and mysterious. This art generally involves death, magic, or mythical monsters. Commonly-associated Hallowe'en characters include ghosts, aliens, ghouls, witches, vampires, bats, owls, crows, vultures, haunted houses, pumpkinmen, black cats, spiders, goblins, zombies, mummies, skeletons, werewolves, and demons. Particularly in America, symbolism is inspired by classic horror films, which contain fictional figures like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, The Wolf Man, and The Mummy. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Hallowe'en.
Black and orange are the traditional colors of Hallowe'en. In modern Hallowe'en images and products, purple, green, and red are also prominent.
The use of these colors is largely a result of advertising for the holiday that dates back for over a century. They tend to be associated with various parts of Hallowe'en's imagery.
COLOR ASSOCIATIONS Color Symbolism
Black death, night, witches, black cats, bats, vampires
Orange pumpkins, jack o' lanterns, Autumn, the turning leaves, fire
Purple night, the supernatural, mysticism
Green goblins, monsters
Red blood, fire, evil
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.
[edit] Trick-or-treating and guising
Main article: Trick-or-treating
The main event of m
Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom originate? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?
The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.
Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.
Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.
Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.
The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.
The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.
The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.
So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.
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