Informative Essay: A Brief History Of Halloween

Around this time of year, people in all parts of the world have celebrated the Celtic festival known as Halloween. The reason I chose this topic was my fascination of the holiday, dressing up as the supernatural, carving Jack-o-Lanterns, and trick or treating. I have always wondered how Halloween became such became such a popular holiday. The origins of Halloween can be traced back to the pre-Christian festival of the dead, also known as Samhain. This ties to the theme of Religion since it was the Celtic’s largest and most important holiday. They believed that Samhain was the day where the ghosts of the deceased where able to communicate with the living. It was later “adopted” by the Christians; they tried to convert the Celtics into their …show more content…
Today Halloween is celebrated as a pagan holiday by trick or treating, dressing up and putting jack-o-lanterns on their porches. These are rituals of Halloween that has transformed throughout the years. When the Celtics celebrated Samhain, they lit bonfires to honor the dead and to help them on their passage to the otherworld. It was also to prevent the dead to seek out the living. In the early centuries, the people gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. In the later centuries in Old England, “soul cakes” were made for the drifting souls and people during the night. Trick or treating seems to have originated from these rituals. People would put offerings of food on their porches to appease the supernatural. As the centuries carried on people started dressing up as the supernatural (ghosts, witches, fairies, etc.), performing tricks in exchange for food and drinks, this practice is called mummering (Santino, 1982). Europe, in the 1950s, children would go around their neighbourhoods with an engraved face out turnips, singing a song (Hop tu naa) while knocking on doors hoping they would be given money (Sandle, 2015).