Halloween is among the oldest traditions in the world as it touches on an essential element of the human condition: the relationship between the living and the dead. The observance evolved from ancient rituals marking the transition from summer to winter, thereby associating it with transformation, which is still a central theme of the holiday.
Halloween traditions in the West date back thousands of years to the
festival of
Samhain
(pronounced 'Soo-when', 'So-ween' or 'Saw-wen'), the Celtic New Year's
festival. The name means "summer's end", and the festival marked the close
of the harvest season and the coming of winter. The Celts believed that
the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest at
this time and so the dead could return and walk where they had before.
Furthermore, those who had died in the past year and who, for one reason
or another, had not yet moved on, could do so at this time and might
interact with the living in saying good-bye.
The first Halloween-like festivities in America started in the southern
colonies. People began to celebrate the harvest, swap ghost stories and
tell each other's fortunes. The holiday we celebrate as Halloween today
really started taking off in the middle of the 19th century, when a wave
of Irish immigrants left their country during the
potato famine.
The newcomers brought their own superstitions and customs, including the
jack-o'-lantern. But back then, they carved them out of turnips, potatoes
and beets instead of pumpkins. Trick-or-treating skyrocketed in popularity
by the 1950s, when Halloween became a true national event.
Today, over 179 million Americans celebrate the holiday — and spend about $9.1 billion annually in the process.