The word "Halloween" comes from a distortion of All Hallows Eve.
November 1 "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day") is a Catholic
day of observance in honor of saints. In the 5th century BC,
in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31.
The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all
those who had died throughout the preceding year would come
back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year.
It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife, (Panati).
The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended
during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle
with the living, (Gahagan).
Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed.
So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the
fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable.
They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes
and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as
destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits
looking for bodies to possess, (Panati).
Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished
their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that
all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common
source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle
of Ireland, at Usinach, (Gahagan).
Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at
the stake who was thought to have already been possessed,
as sort of a lesson to the spirits, (Panati). Other accounts
of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth, (Gahagan).
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own.
But in the first century AD, they abandoned any practice
of sacrificing of humans in favor of burning effigies.
The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become
more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned,
the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and
witches took on a more ceremonial role.
The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the
1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's
potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in
New England included tipping over outhouses and
unhinging fence gates, (Panati).
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have
originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century
European custom called souling. On November 2,
All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village
to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square
pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the
beggars would receive, the more prayers they would
promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors.
At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo
for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers,
could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.
The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore.
As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as
a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree.
Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk,
trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil
that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise
to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied
entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also
denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil.
Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way
through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a
hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally.
But when the immigrants came to America, they found that
pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the
Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin,
lit with an ember.
So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as
their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil
practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a
new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans.
And today, it is only as evil as one cares to make it.
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