Where Did Halloween Come From?

   

"Trick or treat" evolved from a notion that when hungry ghosts are trying to eat you, a person only survives with protection from the saints.

Big Think presents a video of Sharon Gannon explaining the beginnings of Halloween traditions.

Watch her explaination and read along with the transcript.

Then listen, and repeat along with the Halloween conversation on LEC.

... and have a safe and Happy Halloween !!

Trick or Treat

It’s one of a kid’s favorite parts of Halloween. There’s no feeling quite like waiting for a stranger to open his or her door so you can scream the words “trick or treat.” 

But why do we say it? What does it actually mean?

The practice of dressing in costume and asking for treats from your neighbors dates back to the Middle Ages. But back then it wasn’t a game. 

During the medieval practice of souling, poor people would make the rounds begging for food. In return, they offered prayers for the dead on All Souls Day. (What does the “een” in “Halloween” mean exactly? The answer lies here.)

Modern trick or treating is a custom borrowed from guising, which children still do in some parts of Scotland. Guising involves dressing in costume and singing a rhyme, doing a card trick, or telling a story in exchange for a sweet. The Scottish and Irish brought the custom to America in the 19^th century.

The earliest reference of the term “trick or treat” in print was in 1927, in Alberta, Canada. It appears as if the practice didn’t really take hold in the U.S. until the mid-1930s, where it was not always well received. The demanding of a treat angered or puzzled some adults. 

Supposedly, in a Halloween parade in 1948 in New York, the Madison Square Boys Club carried a banner sporting the message “American Boys Don’t Beg.” 

Trick or treating today is now practiced in northwestern and central Mexico. But instead of saying “trick or treat,” children ask, ¿me da mi calaverita?, which means “can you give me my little skull?”

Finally, who is the “Jack” in “Jack O’ Lantern?” Be warned; this tale might give you the chills.

This week thousands of Americans will scoop out the flesh of a gourd, crudely carve a haunting face into its rind, and stick a candle inside. Then the jack-o’-lanterns will proudly be displayed on porches and stoops. Who or what is this wacky tradition named after?

The British can claim ownership of the original use of the phrase “jack-o’-lantern.” In the 17^th century, it referred to a night watchman, a man who literally carried a lantern.

But it was also a nickname for strange, flickering lights seen at night over wetlands, or peat bogs, and mistaken to be fairies or ghosts. This natural phenomenon is also called ignis fatuus, which means “fool’s fire,” and will o’ the wisp.

Eventually what was called a “turnip lantern” became known as a jack-o’-lantern. Young boys used these hollowed-out and lit-up gourds to spook people.

Legend has it that this use of jack-o’-lantern was named after a fellow named Stingy Jack, who thought he had tricked the devil. But the devil had the last laugh, condemning Jack to an eternity of wandering the planet with only an ember of hellfire for light.

Irish immigrants brought the jack-o’-lantern custom to North America, which is where pumpkins were first used to make the Halloween decorations.

Impress fellow partiers this weekend with this fact: a jack-o’-lantern is also the name for an orange fungus. The mushroom Omphalotus olearius is found at the base of hardwood tree stumps. It is extremely poisonous.

(from dictionary.com)

Happy Halloween

Halloween, one of the world's oldest holidays, is still celebrated today in several countries around the globe. Read about Guy Fawkes Day, El Dia de los Muertos and other celebrations of Halloween around the World.
Celebrated each year on October 31, Halloween grew from a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic  and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions, blended together over time to create the holiday we know today. 

In 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 their efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween 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 numbers 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. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second largest commercial holiday.

For much more information on Halloween, including videos, photos and interactives, go to the History Channel.

You can also try Wikipedia, Halloween.com, or kaboose.

And have a Happy Halloween!!!

Halloween Word Origins

Halloween can be traced back to Samhain, the ancient Celtic harvest festival honoring the Lord of the Dead. Observed on November 1 in the British Isles and parts of France, Samhain also marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year. Because it was a time of transition between the old and the new, the Celts believed that the souls of those who had died during the previous year gathered to travel together to the land of the dead and it was also a time when those who had died before that returned to visit their homes. November 1 was also considered the end of the summer period, the date on which the herds were returned from pasture and land tenures were renewed. People lit bonfires to scare away evil spirits and "sacrificed" fruits and vegetables, hoping to appease the spirits of the deceased. Sometimes people disguised themselves in masks and costumes so that the visiting spirits would not recognize them. Charms, spells, and predictions of the future were all part of the eve of Samhain. In the old Celtic calendar, that last evening of October was "old-year's night," the night of all the witches.

When Christianity burgeoned, starting in the fourth century, pagan festivals like Samhain were very much frowned upon. However, the Celts would not give up their ancient rituals and symbols — so the Christian church gave them new names and meanings. November 1 became All Saints' Day (All Hallows' Day in England), by proclamation of Pope Boniface IV in the 7th century, a celebration of all the Christian saints. The evening before All Saints' Day, October 31, became a holy, or hallowed, eve and thus All Hallows' Eve (later Hallow-e'en, Hallowe'en, Halloween). Despite the name change, this holiday's association with the supernatural persisted.

Halloween came to be accepted in America with the influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s. Their folk customs and beliefs merged with existing agricultural traditions. The early American Halloween, therefore, was not only a time to foretell the future and dabble in the occult, but was connected with seasonal tasks of the fall harvest. Over the years, the holiday's agricultural and harvest significance faded and it became primarily a children's holiday — one where they dressed up as the spirits (ghosts and goblins) that their ancestors at one time feared.

Bonfire comes from the words bone and fire ("fire of bones") and originally indicated a large open-air fire on which bones were burnt, either as a ceremony (like a funeral) or for burning heretics or banned books. The Halloween bonfires were lit to scare away evil spirits. Nowadays, bonfires are also celebratory — after a day at the beach or for a homecoming football game.

The word costume came to English via French from Italian for "fashion" or "custom, habit," from Latin consuetudo/consuetudinem meaning "custom." Mask also made a trip through French (masque) from Italian maschera/mascara, perhaps from Latin masca, "evil spirit, witch."

Ghost comes from an Old English word gast/gost, "spirit, soul" and has related forms in other West Germanic languages. These related words appear to be connected with Sanskrit hea, "anger, fury." Goblin is from French and it may be related to the GermanKobold, a mythological spirit who haunted homes and lived underground in caves and mines. Etymologists believe it may be related to Greek kobalos and to Latin Gobelinus, mischievous spirits. The goblin carries the connotation of being grotesque and ugly, evil and malicious. The ghost is just downright scary, being the supposed soul of a dead person.

A jack-o'-lantern (also jack-a-lantern) is a hollowed-out pumpkin, originally a turnip, carved into a demonic face and lit with a candle inside. Light from a candle inserted inside can be seen flickering through the jack-o'-lantern's cutout eyes, nose, and usually grotesquely grinning mouth. The custom originated in the British Isles, with a large turnip or other vegetable rather than a pumpkin. The original meaning of the word jack-o'-lantern was "night watchman" or "man with a lantern," but it took on the Halloween sense by 1837, first in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.

Pumpkin — the large fruit of the plant Cucurbita Pepo — is a word evolved from the original English spelling of pompeon or pumpion or pompion to pumkin and finally topumpkin. The word pompion came from Latin pepo/peponem from Greek pepon, "large melon, edible gourd," from another word pepon, "cooked by the sun; ripe." Another spelling variant is punkin.

In Old English, witch was actually wicca and originally (c 890) was a man who practiced magic or sorcery, which we now call wizard. By the year 1000, witch came to be defined as "a female magician or sorceress."

The colors associated with Halloween are black and orange. Orange, the color of the jack-o'-lantern, is a symbol of strength and endurance as well as of autumn and the harvest. Black is primarily a symbol of death and darkness. The black of a witch's cloak and the black cat are reminders that Halloween was once a festival of the dead.