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Ancient Origins of Halloween

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 time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

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In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

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In England and Ireland during All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day celebrations, poor people would visit the houses of wealthier families and receive pastries called soul cakes in exchange for a promise to pray for the souls of the homeowners’ dead relatives. Known as "souling," the practice was later taken up by children, who would go from door to door asking for gifts such as food, money and ale—an early form of trick-or-treating.

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The practice of carving faces into vegetables became associated with Halloween in Ireland and Scotland around the 1800s. Jack-o-lanterns originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack,” who tricked the Devil and was forced to roam the earth with only a burning coal in a turnip to light his way. People began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits.

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With the exception of Catholic-dominated Maryland and some other southern colonies, Halloween celebrations were extremely limited in early America, which was largely Protestant. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that new immigrants—especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine—helped popularize the celebration nationally.

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These immigrants celebrated as they did back in their homelands—especially by pulling pranks. In the late 1800s, common Halloween tricks included placing farmers’ wagons and livestock on barn roofs, uprooting vegetables in backyard gardens and tipping over outhouses. By the early 20th century, vandalism, physical assaults and sporadic acts of violence were not uncommon on Halloween.

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Haunted or spooky public attractions already had some precedent in Europe. Starting in the 1800s, Marie Tussaud’s wax museum in London featured a “Chamber of Horrors” with decapitated figures from the French Revolution. In 1915, a British amusement ride manufacturer created an early haunted house, complete with dim lights, shaking floors and demonic screams.

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In the U.S., the Great Depression kickstarted the trend. By then, violence around Halloween—no doubt exacerbated by the dire economic conditions—had reached new highs. Parents, concerned about their children running amok on All Hallows' Eve, organized “haunted houses” or “trails” to keep them off the streets.

Costumes and disguises have figured into Halloween celebrations since the holiday's earliest days. But it wasn't until the mid-20th century that costumes started to look like what we know them as today.

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Around the same time neighborhoods began organizing activities such as haunted houses to keep kids safe and occupied, costumes became more important (and less abstract and scary). They began to take the form of things children would have seen and enjoyed, like characters from popular radio shows, comics and movies. In the 1950s, mass-produced box costumes became more affordable, so more kids began to use them to dress up as princesses, mummies, clowns or more specific characters like Batman and Frankenstein’s monster.

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