You probably think Halloween started with candy and costumes. Or maybe you've heard it's a "satanic" holiday. Honestly? Neither is true. If you want to find the real origin of Halloween, you have to look back about 2,000 years to the misty hills of Ireland, long before Amazon sold polyester Batman suits.
It started with the Celts.
They didn't call it Halloween, obviously. They called it Samhain (pronounced sow-in). For them, November 1st was the New Year. It marked the end of summer, the end of the harvest, and the beginning of the dark, cold winter—a time of year that, back then, was frequently associated with human death. The 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. They believed ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
Why the real origin of Halloween isn't what you think
It wasn't just about spooky ghosts. It was practical.
Imagine you're a Celtic farmer. The sun is setting earlier every day. You're bringing your cattle down from the high pastures. You’re killing off the livestock you can’t afford to feed through the winter. It’s a transition. A threshold.
The Celts thought this "thinning" of the veil made it easier for the Druids (Celtic priests) to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were a crucial source of comfort during the long, dark winter. To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires. People gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.
During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes. Not "sexy nurse" costumes, but animal heads and skins. They were trying to hide from the spirits or perhaps appease them.
The Roman Influence
Then the Romans showed up. By A.D. 43, the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. Over the course of the 400 years 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. This likely explains why we still bob for apples today. It’s a 2,000-year-old Roman hand-me-down mixed with Irish paganism.
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How the Church rebranded a pagan party
Christianity spread into Celtic lands. By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had blended with older Celtic rites. In A.D. 1000, the church made November 2nd 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. Big bonfires. Parades. 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.
The "Trick-or-Treat" mystery
Where did the food come from? During the All Souls' Day parades in England, poor citizens would beg for food. 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.
Then there’s the "mummers" tradition. In Ireland and Scotland, people would dress up and perform small plays or songs in exchange for food. It was basically a localized talent show where the prize was not being hungry.
Coming to America
Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies than in rigid, Puritan New England. 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.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumnal festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.
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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.
The Jack-o'-Lantern was actually a turnip
This is a fun one. In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits.
In England, large beets were used.
When these immigrants came to the United States, they found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack-o'-lanterns. They are softer, bigger, and easier to carve than a rock-hard turnip. So, the turnip was fired, and the pumpkin got the job.
The move toward "Family Friendly"
By 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.
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 20th century. By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the main 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 number 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.
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Contemporary Myths vs. Reality
You'll often hear people claim Halloween is a "hallmark holiday" or purely commercial. It’s true that Americans spend about $12 billion annually on the holiday now. But the roots are deep.
Another common myth is that it’s "Satanic." Academic historians like Nicholas Rogers and Ronald Hutton have pointed out that there is zero evidence Samhain was dedicated to the devil. The devil is a Christian concept; the Celts didn't have one. Samhain was about the transition of seasons and the memory of ancestors.
The church actually helped preserve these traditions by "Christianizing" them rather than banning them. If the Catholic Church hadn't moved All Saints' Day to November 1st, the old Samhain rituals might have just faded away into history.
What should you do with this info?
If you want to experience the real origin of Halloween this year, move beyond the plastic decorations.
- Host a "Dumb Supper": This is an old tradition where you eat a meal in silence to honor those who have passed away. It’s surprisingly grounding.
- Carve a Turnip: Seriously, try it. It’s incredibly difficult and smells weirdly like dirt, but you’ll appreciate your pumpkin a lot more afterward.
- Focus on the Harvest: Visit a local farm. Buy seasonal produce. Connect with the idea that winter is coming and the "bright" half of the year is ending.
- Read the Poetry: Look into the work of W.B. Yeats or other Irish writers who captured the folklore of the "Sidhe" (the faeries) and the spirits that were said to walk on Samhain.
Understanding the history doesn't ruin the fun; it just makes the night feel a bit more significant. It’s not just a sugar rush. It’s a 2,000-year-old human habit of whistling in the dark as the cold sets in.
Next time someone tells you Halloween is just a modern invention, you can tell them about the Roman goddess of apples or the terrifying Irish turnips. It’s much more interesting than a bag of fun-size Snickers.
To dive deeper into the folklore, check out the archives of the American Folklore Society or read Ronald Hutton’s The Stations of the Sun. These sources provide the academic backbone to the transition from pagan ritual to modern party.
Actionable Insight: This October 31st, take five minutes to light a candle for someone you’ve lost. It’s the oldest, most authentic way to honor the holiday’s true intent. Whether you believe the "veil is thin" or not, the act of remembering is what started this whole thing in the first place.