What does Halloween means to you? Do you go Trick or Treating? Dress up? Where did Halloween originate from? Why do we celebrate it?........I found an interesting article I wanted to share.......Comment your thought....
History of Halloween
Halloween
is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. The word Halloween is
a shortening of All Hallows' Evening also known as Hallowe'en or All Hallows'
Eve.
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 costumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil
spirits or appease them.
Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around
Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for
treats such as confectionery with the question, "Trick or treat?" The
"trick" part of "trick or treat" is a threat to play a
trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating
is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected
that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in
preparation for trick-or-treaters.
The history of Halloween has evolved. The activity is
popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and due to
increased American cultural influence in recent years, imported through
exposure to US television and other media, trick-or-treating has started to
occur among children in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of
Dhahran, Akaria compounds and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant
growth and resistance is in the United Kingdom, where the police have
threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the
"trick" element. In continental Europe, where the commerce-driven
importation of Halloween is seen with more skepticism, numerous destructive or
illegal "tricks" and police warnings have further raised suspicion
about this game and Halloween in general.
In Ohio, Iowa, and Massachusetts, the night designated for
Trick-or-treating is often referred to as Beggars Night.
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, and
includes Christmas wassailing. 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.
Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona
(1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering, whining],
like a beggar at Hallowmas."
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 (see below) 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. Thus, although a
quarter million Scots-Irish immigrated to America between 1717 and 1770, the
Irish Potato Famine brought almost a million immigrants in 1845-1849, and
British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s, ritualized
begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.
Off the subject a bit - but when I think of Halloween I think of making sweet treats, here are some favorites:
