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    The History of Halloween

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    Andreea Chiva
    Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season. Traditionally, Celts believed the boundaries between the living world and spirit world became blurred on Samhain, allowing spirits to cause havoc. Irish and Scottish immigrants brought versions of Halloween traditions to North America in the 19th century. Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, costume parties, and carving jack-o-lanterns, with the practice of trick-or-treating tracing back to medieval traditions of souling.

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    The History of Halloween

    Uploaded by

    Andreea Chiva
    10 views2 pages
    Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season. Traditionally, Celts believed the boundaries between the living world and spirit world became blurred on Samhain, allowing spirits to cause havoc. Irish and Scottish immigrants brought versions of Halloween traditions to North America in the 19th century. Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, costume parties, and carving jack-o-lanterns, with the practice of trick-or-treating tracing back to medieval traditions of souling.

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    Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season. Traditionally, Celts believed the boundaries between the living world and spirit world became blurred on Samhain, allowing spirits to cause havoc. Irish and Scottish immigrants brought versions of Halloween traditions to North America in the 19th century. Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, costume parties, and carving jack-o-lanterns, with the practice of trick-or-treating tracing back to medieval traditions of souling.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    10 views2 pages

    The History of Halloween

    Uploaded by

    Andreea Chiva
    Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season. Traditionally, Celts believed the boundaries between the living world and spirit world became blurred on Samhain, allowing spirits to cause havoc. Irish and Scottish immigrants brought versions of Halloween traditions to North America in the 19th century. Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, costume parties, and carving jack-o-lanterns, with the practice of trick-or-treating tracing back to medieval traditions of souling.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    The History of Halloween

    Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31.


    Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume
    parties, visiting "haunted houses" and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish
    and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North
    America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced
    the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United
    States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as of
    Australia and New Zealand. Halloween has its origins in the ancient
    Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sah-win").
    The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic
    culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and
    prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries
    between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come
    back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festival would
    frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which
    attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween.
    Masks and consumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.
    Part of the history of Halloween is Halloween costumes. The practice of dressing up in
    costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages.
    Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of "souling," when poor folk would
    go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the
    dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar
    practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.
    Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating
    may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is
    little primary Halloween history documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween
    in Ireland, the UK, or America before 1900. The earliest known reference to ritual
    begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a
    newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, near the border of upstate New York, reported that it
    was normal for the smaller children to go street guising on Halloween between 6 and 7
    p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes
    and songs. Another isolated reference appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third
    reference in Chicago in 1920. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between
    the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict
    trick-or-treating. Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, The Book of
    Hallowe'en, makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America."
    It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest
    known uses in print of the term "trick or treat" appearing in 1934, and the first use in a
    national publication occurring in 1939.

    - taken from www.halloweenhistory.org

    Comprehension Questions
    1. Halloween traditions were brought to America in the _______________ century
    by ____________________ and ____________________ immigrants.

    2. The festival of __________________ is a celebration of the end of the harvest


    season in Gaelic culture.

    3. During the festival, _______________ and ________________ were worn to


    mimic the spirits.

    4. The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on
    holidays goes back to the _____________________.

    5. The earliest known use of the term "trick or treat" appeared in _____________.

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