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Though the holiday began in Celtic regions of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and France, it quickly spread to other parts of the world. The first American colonists in New England were forbidden to celebrate it for religious reasons, though it enjoyed some popularity in the Southern colonies.
- Halloween
Halloween, a holiday observed on October 31, the evening...
- Halloween
- When Is Halloween 2024?
- Ancient History of Halloween
- All Saints' Day
- How Did Halloween Start in America?
- History of Trick-Or-Treating
- Halloween Parties
- Halloween Movies
- All Souls Day and Soul Cakes
- Black Cats and Ghosts on Halloween
- Halloween Matchmaking and Lesser-Known Rituals
Halloween is celebrated each year on October 31. Halloween 2024 will take place on Thursday, October 31.
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a ti...
On May 13, A.D. 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheonin Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century, the...
The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Marylandand the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emer...
Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors....
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully lim...
Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movieshave a long history of being box office hits. Classic Halloween movies include the “Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young boy named Michael Myers murder...
The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encourage...
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help lov...
But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—wi...
3 days ago · According to Kelly, Halloween took root in the U.S. sometime around the 19th century, when the Irish immigrated to America, bringing their traditions and celebrations, including All Saints’ Day,...
- Lifestyle Reporter, SEO
- Sarah Lemire
- 3 min
Oct 30, 2023 · The word “Halloween” originates from “All Hallow’s Eve,” the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallow’s Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November. Like other major...
- Alonso Martínez
4 days ago · Halloween, a holiday observed on October 31, the evening before All Saints’ Day. The celebration marks the day before the Western Christian feast of All Saints and initiates the season of Allhallowtide. In much of Europe and most of North America, observance of Halloween is largely nonreligious.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 21, 2022 · Why do we celebrate Halloween? The origins of Halloween go back thousands of years to Celtic Ireland, evolving through Christianity and Irish immigration to America. It has kept many of its original themes and traditions, including acknowledging spirits, wearing disguises, and exchanging treats.
Oct 26, 2021 · Yet, the Halloween holiday has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “SAH-win”), a pagan religious celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.
