The scoop
Where did Halloween come from?
Every year, the 31st of October we celebrate Halloween, it has become a tradition to decorate our house with spooky things, put a costume of our own preference on and ask for candy at each door. The word "Halloween", from the Scottish variation of the expression "All Hallows' Even", is used for the first time in the sixteenth century and means "All Hallows Eve". But where does Halloween really come from and why is it celebrated with all these traditions?
Halloween has its origins in a festival of pagan origin that was celebrated on the night of October 31, Eve of All Saints' Day (its Christian version), and that has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sow-in" ), which means "end of summer" and was celebrated at the end of the harvest season in Ireland to start the "Celtic New Year", coinciding with the autumn solstice. During that night it was believed that the spirits of the deceased walked among the living and held sacred feasts and rites that included communication with the dead. In addition, it was necessary to place a lit candle in the windows so that the dead would "find their way". This is primarily a Celtic tradition, so was celebrated in countries such as Ireland, Canada, Australia, England and the United States.
But why do we celebrate this holiday with, costumes, candy and spooky things? Well, based on the costumes during the Celtic festival, people, in order to not be attacked by the souls of the dead, dressed up in masks and horrendous clothes, that gave origin to our traditions of getting costumes, with the minor difference that nowadays costumes not necessarily have to be horrendous, because we are not trying to scare the death ones. Also, the Celts had the belief that the dead threatened them if they did not give them what they asked for. So that is where the current tradition of children dressed up in Halloween going door-to-door asking for candy to the cry of trick-or-treat comes from.
The Halloween party began to be massively celebrated until 1921, when in Minnesota the first Halloween parade was held, the following decades the party became more and more popular, undoubtedly years after started its internationalization thanks to the United States, thanks to the movies and the American television series of terror and undead. Halloween started having the largest media and cultural diffusion, due to the transmission of customs and traditions of the Irish immigrants. Nowadays Halloween is one of the most important festivals/holyday around the world, the celebration unifies today the idea of celebrating the extreme closeness of the world of the living and the dead, throughout the year the children anxiously await the day where the sweets are allowed in any quantity, they hope to be able to have the disguise of the most important animated character of the year and to be able to go out to enjoy together with their parents asking for sweets they get tired.
By: Veronica Muñoz 10c
