Fun Facts About Halloween History

Candy, costumes, ghouls and parties are just around the corner as Halloween night approaches. Hearing all the Halloween conversations around me and seeing people prepare for the big event just got me wondering. I know what Halloween is about now, but what are its origins? I’m sure it wasn’t just about scoring the best sack of candy in the neighborhood or a day where girls could getting away with wearing underwear as outerwear and call it a costume.
 
I’d like to think it had a more colorful history than that, and it does. Everything about the day has an interesting fact about how it was started. From the glowing pumpkins we carve and place outside our window sills to the treats that we stock up on to hand out and even the costumes we might spend very little thought on or spend weeks in advance plotting about how unique we want to look. I don’t promise that these are hard and un-refutable facts about Halloween, but definitely some consistent information I found throughout various sites on the subject. Let’s take a look at some history
 
HALLOWEEN. The word is said to originate from the Catholic Church. “It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve.” The celebrations that come along with it on October 31st stem from a Celtic, end of summer celebration, they called “Samhain”. The festivities were held to commemorate the recently completed harvest. It was believed by the Celt that this was also the time of year when the separation between the worlds of the living and the dead was the faintest. Dead friends and relatives' souls would return to earth by inhabiting the bodies of animals-often a black cat, which remains a popular symbol of Halloween to today.
 
JACK-O-LANTERNS. Here in America we commonly think of pumpkins when we talk about our jack-o-lanterns but pumpkins were not used originally. Irish children actually carved potatoes or turnips to use for their Halloween celebrations. As the story goes these hand crafted lanterns were to commemorate Jack, a sneaky jokester so wicked that neither God or the Devil wanted him. Having no place to call home he was he was destined to roam the world endlessly looking for a place to rest. His only warmth and guiding tool during his travels was a candle placed in an old carved out turnip.
 
WITCHES & BROOM STICKS. When preparing for a Sabbath, witches rubbed a sacred ointment on their skin that made them feel like they could fly. While some witches rode around on horseback during their heightened state of mind, the poorer witches would carry a brook or pole to help them vault over steams while they walked. The ointment is said to confuse the mind, speed up the pulse and numb the feet. (I’m curious to know what the heck was in that “ointment”)
 
COSTUMES. In the Celtic Samhain festival, townspeople were afraid of the evil spirits believed to be walking the earth. Their solution to protect themselves from their trickery was to dress up in costumes and carve scary faces into their ember holders. By doing so the townspeople hoped they would frighten evil spirits away long enough to not bother them.
 
There are plenty more myths and fun facts to read about this spooky celebration popular culture has come to love. See what else you can find and have a ghoulish good time this year.