Halloween History

My favourite Holiday is Halloween.

Halloween originated over 2,000 years ago from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, a pagan harvest celebration marking the Celtic new year on November 1st. The Celts believed that on the night of October 31st, the boundary between the living and the dead blurred, allowing spirits to roam the earth. To confuse and ward off these ghosts, people lit massive bonfires and wore disguises made of animal skins. By the 8th century, the Christian church integrated these customs by shifting All Saints’ Day to November 1st. The night before became known as All Hallows’ Eve, which eventually shortened to Halloween.

While most people associate the holiday with candy and pumpkins, history hides some bizarre details:
• The original jack-o’-lanterns were carved from turnips, beets, and potatoes. Irish immigrants only switched to pumpkins when they arrived in America because they were larger and much easier to hollow out.
• Bobbing for apples actually started as a Roman matchmaking ritual. When the Romans conquered Celtic territory, they introduced a festival honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit. Young women would bob for apples to divine the identity of their future husbands.

One of the most popular Halloween traditions across the globe apparently originated in Lethbridge, Alberta. I’m referring to the infamous Halloween doorstep question: Trick or Treat? Lethbridge historian Belinda Crowson said research confirmed the term “Trick or Treat” was first documented in the Lethbridge Herald newspaper on November 4, 1927. The sentence in the paper reads: “Youthful tormentors were at back door and front, demanding edible plunder with the words trick or treat.” The origins of the phrase were first documented in 2012 by the online research website Today I Found Out. A day after the research article was published, the Smithsonian Institution also shared Lethbridge’s first reference to the term in its online magazine.