A Guide To Popular Halloween Traditional Customs

Facts from the original

• Traditional Halloween customs include going trick-or-treating in spooky costumes, pumpkin carving, and going door to door for candy.
• Samhain is a Gaelic term pronounced "SAH-win."
• Samhain was a pagan religious celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.
• Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain.
• Pope Gregory III, who reigned in the seventh century, established the first of November as a day to celebrate saints.
• Not long after, several of the customs associated with Samhain were incorporated into the celebration of All Saints Day.
• All Hallows Eve was the name given to the evening preceding All Saints Day; it was ultimately shortened to Halloween.
• Jack-o'-lanterns were traditionally carved out of turnips rather than pumpkins in Ireland, where the custom first began.
• The jack-o'-lantern custom is said to be based on a tale about a man called Stingy Jack who captured the Devil on several occasions and only released him with the stipulation that Jack would never have to suffer in hell.
• After he died, Jack found that Heaven did not want his soul either, so he was condemned to spend eternity as a ghost chasing after people on earth.
• The Devil provided Jack with a source of illumination in the form of a glowing lump of coal housed inside a turnip that had been hollowed out.
• At some point, locals started carving terrifying faces into their own turnips in an effort to ward off bad spirits.
• The Celts would dress up in disguises at Samhain so that they would not be mistaken for the bad spirits who were said to be roaming the earth at that time.
• Costuming allowed the Celts to avoid being harassed by the spirits and to celebrate the holiday in peace.
• There is a lot of discussion over where trick-or-treating first started, but generally speaking there are three different hypotheses.
• The first hypothesis proposes that in order to satisfy the spirits wandering the Earth at night, Celtic people would put food out during Samhain; people then started dressing up like these otherworldly entities in return for similar donations of food and drink over time.
• Another idea postulates that the candy boom may have its origins in the Scottish custom of guising, which may be seen as a more secularized form of "souling."
• On All Souls Day throughout the Middle Ages, it was common practice for children and destitute adults to go door-to-door in their communities in exchange for food and money from those willing to pray for them.
• Prayers were replaced with non-religious pastimes such as singing, telling jokes, and other "tricks," and the Guisers did away with the practice altogether.
• The concept that black cats are terrifying originates from the Middle Ages, when people believed that these dark felines were a representation of the devil.
• Decades later, convicted witches were often discovered to have cats, especially black ones, which did not help the black cat's reputation.
• People started believing that the cats were "familiars" of witches, who are otherworldly creatures that help witches in their practice of dark magic; ever since, black cats have been associated with spooky things.
• Black and orange, the traditional colors of Halloween, have their origins in Samhain, a holiday celebrated in Celtic countries.
• Orange was the color that signified the harvest season in fall to the Celts.
• Orange is representative of the fire that burns during the festival of Samhain, whereas black was thought to represent the "death" of summer and the dark months that come with winter.
• In Ireland, apple bobbing is more commonly known as "snap apple."
• The snap apple variation typically sees players lunging teeth-first at apples suspended from strings rather than having them thrashing around in buckets of water.
• In his book Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, written in the 18th century, British military surveyor Charles Vallancey, who was stationed in Ireland at the time, discusses the game.
• Charles Vallancey notes that young people who were not yet married would compete to see who would be the next to be married.
• The person who is the first to bite into a hanging apple will be able to stroll down the center aisle before anybody else.
• Bobbing for apples originated as a courtship ritual — a game for divining the future romantic entanglements of the players.