All Hallows' Eve History

All Hallows’ Eve or more commonly known Halloween is a very well known holiday that people young and old celebrate on October 31st all over the country, but besides the fun of dressing up and going trick or treating, how much does one know about the history behind it?

Halloween gets its roots from the Gaelic festival which was celebrated more than a hundred years ago, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween), that celebrated summer’s end and it is more or less a celebration of the Celtic New Year, which brought on the dark season. The whole event had elements of a festival of the dead because they thought that they were allowing spirits to pass through as the family’s deaths were honored with good spirits as guests and trying to let the bad spirits off by dressing up with different masks and costumes.  In fact it is not a coincidence that the holiday coincides with the Catholic All Saints Day which is on November 1st, even though now it is mainly celebrated in the United States and Canada, but became popular in Western Europe too.

The history of the actual name of Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween) comes from the old English word “Eallara Halgena Aefen” which actually stands for All Saints’ Day and the festivity of All Saints Day was moved in the eight century from May 13th to November 1st by the Pope Gregory III, to get more control of the religious festivities as opposed by the pagan ones that it seemed were taking over at that time.

In the United States the history of Halloween is initially tied to the cultures of the immigrants in the different states and personal spiritual faiths. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween) in the Victorian period the high class society was the one that took over the festivity and a lot of benefit galas were organized on that evening to take away the connection with deaths. And then around the beginning of the twentieth century different companies had already started to market Halloween products and here is also when the term “trick or treat” comes to be, and with the Second World War Halloween was used to keep morality high for the troops as well as the civilians. After that ended the children completely took over Halloween with jokes, candies and costumes scary and not and made this festivity fun for all.