Thread: Interesting Halloween Facts!

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I found a few interesting facts about our favorite holiday...

1-Halloween was originally a Celtic holiday celebrated on October 31st. It
as called The Festival of Samhain. Later it was later called All Hallows Eve
and over the years it was shortened to Halloween!

2-Halloween was brought to North America by immigrants from Europe who
celebrated the harvest around bonfires, telling ghost stories, singing,
dancing, and telling fortunes! (Sounds like fun!)

3-Orange and black are the Halloween colors because orange is associated
with the fall harvest and black is associated with darkness and death!

4-Halloween is the 2nd largest commercially sucessful holiday, with Christmas
being the first. People spend over 2.5 BILLION dollars on costumes,
decorations, and parties. They spend another 2 BILLION on candy!

5-Trick-or-treating originated with the Irish. Irish townsfolk would visit their
neighbors and ask for contributions of food for a feast in town. It became
as we know it now in America in the early 1900's.

6-Dressing up in costumes came the ancient celts. They thought spirits and
ghosts roamed the countryside on Halloween night, so they wore masks
and costumes to avoid being reconized as human!

7-Jack-o-lanterns originated in Ireland. They put candles in hollowed-out
turnips to keep away spirits and ghosts. Pumpkins were later brought back
from the new world and quickly became more popular. The name "Jack"
came from the story of a miser named Jack who died and couldn't get into
heaven because he had been a miser all his life. He had tricked the devil
out of soul and couldn't get into hell either. The devil told Jack he was
doomed to wander tthrough darkness the rest of eternity and threw a
glowing coal to light his way. Jack placed the coal in a turnip and used it
as a lantern....and the Jack-o-lantern was born.

8-SAMHAINOPHOBIA is an intense fear of Halloween! I KID YOU NOT!

Want to take a Halloween quiz? They ask you 20 questions about
Halloween. I got 14 out of 20 right. To take the quiz go to
http//www.theholidayspot.com/halloween/quiz.htm

GOOD LUCK!

Shhhhh don't let out the secret that we Irish have a holiday that does not involve drinking in some way!!!

Just a little follow-up to No 1

Samhain is pronounced "sah-van" or "sow-in" (where "ow" rhymes with "cow").

Samhain is Irish Gaelic for the month of November.
Samhuin is Scottish Gaelic for All Hallows, Nov 1.

The Festival of Samhain was celebrated the night before on Oct 31

All Hallows Eve...

Hallows means holy or to respect or honor greatly; revere.

So Halloween is sort of like Christmas eve.

But better.

Originally Posted by The Halloween Goblin

6-Dressing up in costumes came the ancient celts. They thought spirits and ghosts roamed the countryside on Halloween night, so they wore masks and costumes to avoid being recognized as human!

Many popular histories of Halloween claim this, but I have yet to find any pre-20th century source for this.

Originally Posted by The Halloween Goblin

Jack-o-lanterns originated in Ireland. They put candles in hollowed-out turnips to keep away spirits and ghosts. Pumpkins were later brought back from the new world and quickly became more popular. The name "Jack" came from the story of a miser named Jack who died and couldn't get into heaven because he had been a miser all his life. He had tricked the devil out of soul and couldn't get into hell either. The devil told Jack he was doomed to wander tthrough darkness the rest of eternity and threw a glowing coal to light his way. Jack placed the coal in a turnip and used it as a lantern....and the Jack-o-lantern was born.

Not directly. The term "jack-o'-lantern" was first applied to carved vegetable lanterns in America (in 1837), not Britain or Ireland. In Britain and Ireland, from the mid-1600s to at least 1920, "jack-o'-lantern" referred only to the "will-o'-the-wisp" phenomenon. More here.

Those are really kewl facts about the history of this wonderful holiday.

Thanks so much!

Interesting! Number 5 got me thinking where it said halloween as we know it started in the early 1900's. My mom is nearly 80 and I can't remember her ever talking about TOTing as a kid. I'll have to ask her how things were back then!

That's neat. Thanks for sharing. :-)

I see many of the members here have done their homework. It's interesting that a holiday that originated in another country has become so huge here in the USA. The amount of celebrating and money spent on this holiday is amazing.

Originally Posted by Deadna

Interesting! Number 5 got me thinking where it said halloween as we know it started in the early 1900's. My mom is nearly 80 and I can't remember her ever talking about TOTing as a kid. I'll have to ask her how things were back then!

From Wikipedia:

Trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary 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.