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Halloween 2021
HISTORY.COM EDITORS • UPDATED: OCT 25, 2021 · ORIGINAL: NOV 18, 2009

Sykadelx/Getty Images

Halloween is a holiday
CONTENTS celebrated each year on October
31, and Halloween 2021 will
1. Ancient Origins of
occur on Sunday, October 31.
Halloween
The tradition originated with the
2. All Saints' Day
ancient Celtic festival of
3. Halloween Comes to
America Samhain, when people would

4. History of Trick-or- light bonfires and wear

Treating costumes to ward off ghosts. In
5. Halloween Parties the eighth century, Pope
6. Halloween Movies Gregory III designated
7. All Souls Day and Soul November 1 as a time to honor
Cakes all saints. Soon, All Saints Day
8. Black Cats and Ghosts incorporated some of the
on Halloween traditions of Samhain. The
9. Halloween Matchmaking evening before was known as All
and Lesser-Known
Rituals Hallows Eve, and later
Halloween. Over time,
Halloween evolved into a day of
activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive
gatherings, donning costumes and eating treats.

READ MORE: Halloween Through the Centuries: A Timeline

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.

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.

Did you know? One quarter of all the candy sold

annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic

territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic
lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the
traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans
traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second
was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees.
The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this
celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of
bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

READ MORE: Halloween Costumes That Disguised, Spooked and

Thrilled Through the Ages

20

GALLERY 20 IMAGES

All Saints' Day

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in
Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All
Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory
III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all
martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into

Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older
Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’
Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the
church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead
with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big

bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels
and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-
hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse
meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional
night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-
Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

READ MORE: How the Early Catholic Church Christianized

Halloween

Halloween Comes to America

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New
England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there.
Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern
colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and

the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of
Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play
parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest.
Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s
fortunes, dance and sing.

Did you know? More people are buying costumes

for their pets. Americans spent $490 million on
costumes for their pets in 2019—more than double
what they spent in 2010.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost

stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th
century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween
was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with
new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of
Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the
celebration of Halloween nationally.

READ MORE: Monsters in the White House: The Best

Presidential Halloween Costumes

10

GALLERY 10 IMAGES

History of Trick-or-Treating
Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up
in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a
practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition.
Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the
name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with
yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

READ MORE: How Trick-or-Treating Became a Halloween

Tradition

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween

into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers
than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the
century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the
most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games,
foods of the season and festive costumes.

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Halloween

Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders

to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween
celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its
superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the
twentieth century.

Halloween Parties
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but
community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide
Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best
efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to
plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.

By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and

Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young.
Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby
boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or
home, where they could be more easily accommodated.

Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-

treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively
inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween
celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being
played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small
treats.

Thus, a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to

grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on
Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial
holiday after Christmas.

READ MORE: The Haunted History of Halloween Candy

Halloween Movies
Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movies have a
long history of being box office hits. Classic Halloween movies
include the “Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film
directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Nick
Castle, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young
boy named Michael Myers murders his 17-year-old sister and is
committed to jail, only to escape as a teen on Halloween night and
seek out his old home, and a new target. A direct sequel to the
original "Halloween" was released in 2018, starring Jamie Lee Curtis
and Nick Castle. A sequel to that—"Halloween Kills," the twelfth
film in the "Halloween" franchise overall—was released in 2021.

Considered a classic horror film down to its spooky soundtrack,

"Halloween" inspired other iconic “slasher films” like “Scream,”
“Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13.” More family-friendly
Halloween movies include “Hocus Pocus,” “The Nightmare Before
Christmas,” “Beetlejuice” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie
Brown.”

READ MORE: The Real Stories Behind Classic Horror Movies

GALLERY 6 IMAGES

All Souls Day and Soul Cakes

The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably
dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During
the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would
give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to
pray for the family’s dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a

way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for
roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-
souling,” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the
houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both

European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an
uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and,
for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter
were full of constant worry.

On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the

earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if
they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts,
people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so
that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.

On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people

would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the
ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

READ MORE: 8 of Halloween's Most Hair-Raising Folk Legends

GALLERY 8 IMAGES

Black Cats and Ghosts on Halloween

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and
superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during
which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends.
For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left
treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles
to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and

malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We
avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us
bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many
people believed that witches avoided detection by turning
themselves into black cats.

READ MORE: Why Black Cats Are Associated With Bad Luck

We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This
superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who
believed that triangles were sacred (it also may have something to
do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be
fairly unsafe). And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid
breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

Halloween Matchmaking and Lesser-

Known Rituals
But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s
trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete
rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living
instead of the dead.

In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify

their future husbands and reassuring them that they would
someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-
century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her
mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to
the diner who found it.

In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young

woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the
nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than
popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future
husband. (In some versions of this legend, the opposite was true:
The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.)

Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction

made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on
Halloween night she would dream about her future husband.

Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that

the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future
husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at
egg yolks floating in a bowl of water and stood in front of mirrors
in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their
shoulders for their husbands’ faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties,

the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first
to marry. At others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the
first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we’re asking for romantic advice or trying to

avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween
superstitions relies on the goodwill of the very same “spirits” whose
presence the early Celts felt so keenly.

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