The Real History of Halloween

It started as a harvest festival

The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in) marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the "dark half" of the year. The Celts believed the veil between the living and the dead thinned on the night of October 31st.

Bonfires and disguises

To ward off spirits, people lit massive bonfires and wore animal skins and masks — the original costumes. Food was left out for the dead, which centuries later became the ancestor of trick-or-treating.

The Christian rebrand

Around the 8th century, the Church folded Samhain into All Saints' Day on November 1st. October 31st became All Hallows' Eve — eventually shortened to Halloween.

From Ireland to America

Irish immigrants brought the holiday to the U.S. in the 1800s. Early American Halloween was mostly a night of pranks (and cow-tipping). Cities eventually pushed community trick-or-treating to control the mischief.

The commercial explosion

Halloween became a major commercial holiday in the 1950s, when candy companies mass-produced individually wrapped sweets. Costume manufacturers followed. By the 1970s, Halloween was firmly a $1B+ industry — today it's over $12B in the U.S. alone.

What survives

Despite all the reinvention, three things persist from Samhain:

• Fire and light against the dark.
• Disguises to walk unseen among spirits.
• Food shared with the dead.

That's what you're doing when you light a jack-o'-lantern, put on a mask, and drop candy in a stranger's bag.