ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN

Halloweens origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced
sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United
Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day
marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a
time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night
before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became
blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that
the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging
crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the
Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely
dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of
comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people
gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the
celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins,
and attempted to tell each others fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit
their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred
bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the
course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman
origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was
Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing
of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and
trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into
Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today
onHalloween.

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of
all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the
Western church. Pope Gregory III (731741) later expanded the festival to include all
saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it
gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church
would make November 2 All Souls Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed
today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a
related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to
Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and
devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas
(from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints Day) and the night before it,
the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows
Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA

Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of

the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common
in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European
ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of
Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included play parties, public events
held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each
others fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling
of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth
century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated
everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants.
These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Irelands potato famine of
1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish
and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house
asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became todays trick-or-treat
tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or
appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

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 these 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 billion annually on Halloween, making it the
countrys second largest commercial holiday.

TODAYS HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS

The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the

early All Souls Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg
for food and families would give them pastries called soul cakes in return for their
promise to pray for the familys dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was
encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and
wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as going a-souling was
eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and
be given ale, food, and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots.
Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies
often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were
full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the
earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes.
To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left
their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On
Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food
outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

HALLOWEEN SUPERSTITIONS

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It
began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to
deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner
table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved
ones find their way back to the spirit world. Todays Halloween ghosts are often
depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are
scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad
luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that
witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under
ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient
Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do
with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around
Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road
or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that todays trick-or-treaters have
forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the
past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young
women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday
with luck, by next Halloweenbe married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking
cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true
love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible
young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the
fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went,
represented the girls future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the
opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.)
Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts,
hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future
husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels
would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands initials; tried to learn about
their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of
mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their
husbands faces. Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the
first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the
first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether were asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of
bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the very
same spirits whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.

How Halloween Works

Halloween stands out as one of the most unique holidays in the United States.

In the United States and Canada, every October brings an avalanche of carved
pumpkins, dancing skeletons, smiling ghosts, and witches riding on brooms. Halloween
certainly stands out from the rest of the holidays we observe throughout the year: It's
full of frightening ghost stories, pranks, elaborate costumes and bizarre games. On
Halloween, we all revel in being scared.

Halloween also stands out because of its unique mix of secular and religious elements.
In recent years, the holiday has stirred up a lot of controversy because it offends some
Christian groups, which in turn upsets many modern-day Wiccans and Druids.

If you've ever wondered where all those peculiar Halloween practices come from, or
you can't figure out why Halloween is such a hot topic with a lot of people, then this
article will get you ready for the next October 31. We'll look at both the Celtic and
Christian origins of Halloween, examine all the favorite Halloween traditions and sort
out a little bit of the Halloween controversy.
The next time you're carving a pumpkin or handing out candy to little Draculas and
Darth Vaders, you'll actually know where these practices come from.

MEANING OF HALLOWEEN

People visit the tombs of their relatives during All Saints' Day celebrations.

One obvious question about Halloween is, "What does the word itself mean?" The name
is actually a shortened version of "All Hallows' Even," the eve of All Hallows' Day.
"Hallow" is an Old English word for "holy person," and All Hallows' Day is simply
another name for All Saints' Day, the day Catholics commemorate all the saints. At
some point, people began referring to All Hallows' Even as "Hallowe'en" and then
simply "Halloween."

Following the Jewish tradition, Christians observe many holy days from sundown on
one day until sundown on the following day. This is where we get the practice of
celebrating Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, etc. The direct predecessor of modern-day
Halloween is the festivity that began All Saints' Day, which started atsundown on
October 31.

While it takes its name from All Saints' Day, modern Halloween is actually a
combination of several different traditions. In fact, a lot of the things we do on
Halloween predate Christianity entirely. In the following sections, we'll look at the chief
traditions that feed into today's Halloween and see how they got all tangled up together
in one holiday.
CELTIC ROOTS: SAMHAIN

Some Halloween traditions can be traced back to Celtic practices.

Most of the traditions of Halloween date back toSamhain (sow-en), the ancient Celtic
New Year. Samhain, which translates to "end of summer," occurred around the end of
October, when theweather started to get cold. At its heart, Samhain was an observance
of all the important things that were happening during this change of seasons.

The Celtic people, who came together as a society around 800 B.C., kept sheep and
cattle. When the weather got colder, the shepherds brought their animals down from the
hills to closer pastures. This shift changed daily life significantly. In the winter months,
everybody stayed inside or close to home, working on handcrafts and spending time
together. Samhain also marked the final harvest of the year, an event commemorated by
festivals in many cultures.

Celtic tradition held that turning points, times when things change from one state to
another, had magical properties. Samhain marked the biggest turning point of the year --
a change in the weather as well as a shift in everybody's lives. The Celts believed this
magical time opened up a sort of connection to the dead. Those souls that had passed
through the ultimate turning point, the shift from life to death. They believed the world
of the living was closest to the world of the dead at the time of Samhain, and that the
spirits of the dead traveled again among the living. A lot of the activities of the Samhain
festival were connected to this belief, and many of those practices evolved into modern-
day Halloween traditions.

The Celts recorded their history orally -- they did not write anything down, but passed
on beliefs and stories from person to person. For this reason, historians often disagree
about the Celts' practices and beliefs. So nobody is really sure what the Samhain festival
was like, but there are a number of accounts that provide interesting explanations of
modern-day Halloween practices, as we'll see in later sections.

CHRISTIAN ROOTS: ALL SAINTS' DAY AND ALL SOULS' DAY

All Saints' Day was established in order to honor all of the saints at one time. It is
celebrated on November 1.

Christians have been honoring their virtuous dead from the earliest days of the religion.
In traditional Roman Catholicism, exceedingly virtuous men and women may
be canonized as saints in the afterlife. Since they are endowed with holiness, saints are
close to God, and may perform miracles on earth. Roman Catholics, and some other
Christians, honor saints and ask them for guidance in daily life.
Catholics commemorate many saints on their own "saints day," often the anniversary of
their death. But with thousands of canonized saints, only a small percentage are
recognized regularly. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV officially established All
Saints' Day in order to honor all the saints at one time. History records such a sacred
day before Boniface's time, but it wasn't widely observed.
Originally, Christians observed All Saints' Day on May 13. But in the eighth century,
Pope Gregory III moved it to November 1. Officially, the Church chose this new date to
mark the papal dedication of a church honoring the saints. But many historians believe
the Church really moved the observance to correspond with Samhain and other pagan
fall festivals.

The Catholic Church had a long-standing policy of incorporating non-Christian

traditions into its holidays in order to bring people into the Catholic faith. This included
moving the dates of Christian holidays to those of established non-Christian occasions.
Many historians believe, for example, that the church set Christmas on December 25 so
that it would correspond with pagan winter solstice festivals.

In any case, when All Saints' Day moved to November 1, the church did begin to
incorporate Samhain traditions into the holy day's activities. This helped bring
descendants of the ancient Celts into Christianity, but it posed some problems for the
church. Much of the Samhain traditions centered on the supernatural and spirit world,
ideas that don't have much of a place in Christianity. Recognizing saints, who were by
definition deceased, covered a lot of the same ground, but the converts were still
fascinated by the idea of their familiar dead returning to the world of the living.

Despite some unease in the church, many supernatural ideas persisted in All Saints' Day
Eve celebrations, making the occasion a remarkable combination of Christian and pagan
beliefs. At the end of the 10th century, the church tried to give these traditions a little
more direction by establishing All Souls' Day, an occasion to recognize all Christian
dead.

All Souls' Day, observed on November 2, is celebrated with Masses and festivities in
honor of the dead. The living pray on behalf of Christians who are in purgatory, the
state in the afterlife where souls are purified before proceeding to heaven. Souls in
purgatory, who are members of the church just like living Christians, must suffer so that
they can be purged of their sins. Through prayer and good works, living members of the
church may help their departed friends and family.

After its introduction, this holiday did sate many Catholics' interest in death and the
supernatural. But the unchristian idea of wandering spirits persisted in some areas, as
did the festivity atmosphere of Samhain. Conceding that they could not completely get
rid of the supernatural elements of the celebrations, the Catholic Church began
characterizing the spirits as evil forces associated with the devil. This is where we get a
lot of the more disturbing Halloween imagery, such as evil witches and demons.
All Souls' Day lives on today, particularly in Mexico, where All Hallows' Eve, All
Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are collectively observed as "Los Dias de los Muertos"
(The Days of the Dead). First and foremost, the Days of the Dead is a time when
families fondly remember the deceased. But it is also a time marked by festivities,
including spectacular parades of skeletons and ghouls. In one notable tradition, revelers
lead a mock funeral procession with a live person inside a coffin.

This masquerade is closely connected to the celebration of Halloween, as are other

elements of All Souls' Day. In the next section, we'll see how one early All Souls' Day
ritual may have led to modern trick-or-treating.

TRICK-OR-TREATING

In medieval times, one popular All Souls' Day practice was to make "soul cakes,"
simple bread desserts with a currant topping. In a custom called "souling," children
would go door-to-door begging for the cakes, much like modern trick-or-treaters. For
every cake a child collected, he or she would have to say a prayer for the dead relatives
of the person who gave the cake. These prayers would help the relatives find their way
out of purgatory and into heaven. The children even sang a soul cake song along the
lines of the modern "Trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat." One
version of the song went:

A soul cake! A soul cake! Have mercy on all Christian souls, for A soul cake!

There is also some evidence of trick-or-treat type activities in the original Celtic
tradition. Historians say the Celts would dress up in ghoulish outfits and parade out of
town to lead the wandering spirits away. Additionally, Celtic children would walk door
to door to collect firewood for a giant communal bonfire. Once the bonfire was burning,
the revelers would extinguish all the other fires in the village. They would then relight
every fire with a flame taken from the Samhain bonfire, as a symbol of the people's
connection to one another.

A lot of the Samhain celebration had to do with honoring Celtic gods, and there's
evidence that the Celts would dress as these deities as part of the festival. They may
have actually gone door to door to collect food to offer to the gods. It is fairly clear that
Samhain involved an offering of food to spirits. There may have been animal sacrifices,
and some historians say the Celts even sacrificed people, but the evidence is not
conclusive.

The Celts believed in fairies and other mischievous creatures, and the notion of
Halloween trickery may have come from their reported activities on Samhain. There's
also good reason to suppose that the Celtic New Year's Eve was something like our own
New Year's Eve -- a time when people let go of their inhibitions, drank heavily and got
into trouble. The trickery tradition may simply come from this spirit of revelry. We'll see
how the Celts also influenced the Halloween tradition of carving pumpkins next.

JACK-O'-LANTERNS

Jack-o-lanterns come from the Celtic ritual of carrying an ember in a hollow

turnip. Learn about Stingy Jack and the tradition of Halloween jack-o-lanterns.

As part of the Samhain celebration, Celts would bring home an ember from the
communal bonfire at the end of the night. They carried these embers in hollowed-out
turnips, creating a lantern resembling the modern day jack-o'-lantern.
But the direct predecessor of jack-o'-lanterns dates from 18th-century Ireland, where
ancient Celtic traditions remained a significant part of the national culture. A very
popular character in Irish folk tales was Stingy Jack, a disreputable miser who, on
several occasions, avoided damnation by tricking the devil (often on All Hallows' Eve).
In one story, he convinced Satan to climb up a tree for some apples and then cut crosses
all around the trunk so the devil couldn't climb down. The devil promised to leave Jack
alone forever, if he would only let him out of the tree.

When Jack eventually died, he was turned away from Heaven, due to his life of sin. But,
in keeping with their agreement, the Devil wouldn't take Jack either. He was cursed to
travel forever as a spirit in limbo. As Jack left the gates of Hell, the Devil threw him a
hot ember to light the way in the dark. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip
and wandered off into the world. According to the Irish legend, you might see Jack's
spirit on All Hallows' Eve, still carrying his turnip lantern through the darkness.

Traditional jack-o'-lanterns, hollowed-out turnips with embers or candles inside, became

a very popular Halloween decoration in Ireland and Scotland a few hundred years ago.
Folk tradition held that they would ward off Stingy Jack and other spirits on Halloween,
and they also served as representations of the souls of the dead. Irish families who
emigrated to America brought the tradition with them, but they replaced the turnips with
the more plentiful pumpkins. As it turns out, pumpkins were easier to carve than turnips.
People began to cut frightening faces and other elaborate designs into their jack-o'-
lanterns.

In the next section, we'll look at another popular Halloween food tradition: bobbing for
apples.

BOBBING FOR APPLES

A pentagram shape is visible when you cut an apple in half.

All Hallows' Eve has long been a time to look into the future, and traditional festivities
included severaldivination rituals. These come mostly from folk traditions from the
British Isles, and many have their roots in the ancient Samhain festivities.

A lot of marriage divinations had to do with apples. In Celtic tradition, the fruit was
associated with female deities who controlled the ways of love. This may have
something to do with the inner structure of apples. When you slice an apple in two, you
can see a pentagram shape (a star with five points) on each half, around the core. The
pentagram was an important shape for the ancient Celtics, and many other cultures.
Among other things, it was a Goddess symbol.

One of the most popular divinations was for young unmarried people to try to bite into
an apple floating in water or hanging from a string. This is something like the bouquet
toss that still plays a part in wedding receptions -- the first person to bite into the apple
would be the next one to marry.

In another tradition, a young woman would light a candle and peel an apple in front of a
mirror. While she was peeling the apple, her future husband would supposedly appear in
place of her reflection. Peeling an apple was also a way to predict your life expectancy.
If you could cut off one long peel, you would live to an old age. If you only cut a small
piece of peel, you would die young.

Apples are still a big part of Halloween celebrations. In addition to apple-bobbing,

modern Halloween revelers drink apple cider, make candy apples and hand out apples to
trick-or-treaters.

In the next section, we'll look at some of the other modern traditions of Halloween, most
of which evolved in the United States.

AMERICAN HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS

Wearing Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating are the most popular American
Halloween traditions. Learn about Halloween costumes and other fun traditions.

Since the 1800s, when Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their Halloween festivities
to North America, the holiday has evolved considerably. The celebration's connection
with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day has mostly fallen by the wayside, and a number
of new secular traditions have developed.

For children, dressing up and trick-or-treating door-to-door is still the main event. Most
households in the United States and Canada participate, and those who don't run the risk
of petty vandalism. Many adults dress up themselves, to go out with their children or to
attend costume parties and contests.

Halloween continues to be extremely popular with kids of all ages; 85 to 90 percent of

U.S. children go trick-or-treating or engage in other Halloween festivities every year,
and many adults also join in on the fun. In a 2000 poll, the National Retail Federation
found that 65 percent of U.S. adults between 18 and 34 attended Halloween costume
parties or other celebrations.

Other Halloween activities fill the whole month of October. These traditions preserve
Samhain's spirit of revelry in the face of frightening thoughts of death and the
supernatural. Americans have added scary movies, community haunted houses, ghost
stories and Ouija boards to the celebration. Greeting cards and festive decorations are
also a big part of Halloween. The holiday is second only to Christmas in total
revenue dollars for retailers.

In the United States, Halloween lags just behind New Year's Eve and the Super Bowl in
total number of parties, and it's second only to Christmas in total consumer dollars
spent. According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. consumers spent an average of
$44 per household in 2002 on Halloween candy, costumes and decorations. Families
with young children spent an average of $62. The 2002 holiday brought in about $6.9
billion in sales in the United States.

Another common Halloween custom is collecting money for the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), in lieu of or in addition to candy. This started in 1950 in
Philadelphia, when a Sunday school class had the idea of collecting money for needy
children when trick-or-treating. They sent the money they made, about $17, to UNICEF,
which was inspired by the idea and started a trick-or-treat program in 1955. Interested
churches, schools and parents can order special orange-and-black collection boxes,
along with materials explaining the UNICEF program.

HALLOWEEN CONTROVERSIES

Some Christian groups claim images of witches and demons carry satanic
connotations.

Although Halloween comes in part from Christian tradition, many Christian groups
want nothing to do with the holiday because of its pagan elements. Prominent
Halloween figures, such as witches and ghouls, carry an uncomfortable satanic
connotation to some Christians, and they do not want to expose their children to these
images. Some groups are also disturbed by the origins of the holiday, as it is a common
belief that the Samhain festival was a celebration of a devil-like god of the dead called
Samhain. Most evidence suggests that this is not actually the case -- the main
documentation for such a god comes from material apparently produced by the Catholic
Church hundreds of years ago, as a means of converting people away from Druidism.

Christian groups are also disturbed by rumors that modern day Wiccans and Druids
observe Halloween as an occasion to worship Satan or other evil forces. The established
organizations of these groups completely disavow all knowledge of such practices,
though they do say that Halloween is an important day of the year in their religion.
Every year, there are some reports of satanic rituals and even animal sacrifices, but most
of these stories prove to be fabrications. Any actual sacrifices are the practices of
individuals and smaller extremist groups, operating outside any larger organization.

Many Wiccans, modern-day witches, get upset around Halloween because they feel that
they are misrepresented by a few Christian spokesmen and the news media. They want
to separate their religion from the popular notion of witches as evil figures in league
with the devil. They say that modern witchcraft is based on ancient Wiccan and Druid
beliefs that had nothing to do with Satan or other figures from Judeo-Christian theology.
Wiccans say that their religion is based on a connection to nature and the universe, not
to dark forces and evil spells as the popular idea of a witch suggests.

More generally, Halloween is controversial because some parents think it is an

inappropriate, possibly dangerous holiday for children. In modern society, children are
in some physical danger when they go trick-or-treating because they are walking around
neighborhoods in the dark, accepting candy from strangers. The frightening imagery
surrounding Halloween is also a concern. Many parents fear that monsters
and ghosts are too disturbing to children, noting that younger trick-or-treaters have a
hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality and may be overwhelmed by
people in monster costumes. In recent years, more and more parents have steered away
from trick-or-treating, taking their children to school or church Halloween parties
instead.

This is a tough issue for parents, because they often have very fond memories of trick-
or-treating when they were children, but don't feel comfortable taking their own kids
out. They say that Halloween was less frightening when they were kids because it was
mostly about dressing up in fun costumes, and children weren't exposed to as much
disturbing imagery in popular culture. Modern horror movies have become a
particularly sore point for concerned parents, as they are usually extremely violent.

Others note that many aspects of Halloween are important to children. Dressing up can
give a shy child a boost of self-confidence, and trick-or-treating may create a healthy
feeling of community in a neighborhood. Most of all, adults who love Halloween would
hate to see their favorite traditions phased out, because they remember how much they
enjoyed them when they were kids. At this point, Halloween does seem to be headed for
some changes, but there are many different ideas of what these changes should be.

THE LOVE OF HALLOWEEN

Fear of death and the unknown is what drives people to celebrate holidays like
Halloween.

So now that we know where the different elements of Halloween come from, the
question remains: Why do we revel in a celebration of death and supernatural forces?

Two related questions are:

Why do we enjoy being scared?

Why do we enjoy dressing up as scary figures?

All of these pleasures seem to be universal human traits, with death-related festivals and
costume parades popping up in many cultures. As human beings, we are acutely aware
of our own mortality and death in general. Human cultures are obsessed with death
because we cannot understand it, yet it looms over everything we do. It is one of the
most frightening mysteries we face in life. One way to feel more comfortable with this
unknown realm is to make light of it with a festival. This brings all of the frightening
ideas out in the open, where we can face them more comfortably, enjoying ourselves
with other people instead of contemplating mortality on our own.

In addition to working through uneasiness about death and supernatural mysteries,

people like to feel frightened for purely biological reasons. When you watch a scary
movie or take a ride on a roller coaster, your brain triggers a fear response. Your body
releases adrenaline and other hormones that provide extra energy to deal with the
situation. When you're actually in danger, of course, you don't enjoy the feeling of these
hormones, you simply use them to fight, escape or take some other action. When the
danger is simulated, though, your mind knows you're actually safe and you enjoy the
energy that the hormones give you. Intentional, contained fear is fun because it provides
a hormone rush and helps you work through your general fears in a safe environment.
Learn more about this reaction in How Fear Works.

By dressing up as our fears, we embrace them even more closely, taking control of them
to some extent. This can be particularly effective with children. They usually don't fear
mortality as much as they do sinister figures like monsters and ghosts. Once they've
dressed themselves up as a monster and played that character, they cut through some of
the monster's mystery, making it less ominous.

Trick-or-treating is not all about dressing up as frightening figures, of course. Just as

often, children dress as a favorite cartoon character or an adult figure such as a
firefighter or astronaut. The pleasure in this is the simple joy of playacting -- kids look
forward to Halloween because they get to inhabit a character, whether it be a frightening
figure or an idolized superhero. Adults enjoy dressing up for similar reasons, and this is
why the masquerade plays a part in so many festivals from different cultures. Putting on
a mask lets people drop their inhibitions and step outside of themselves for an evening.
People in costumes often say and do things they probably wouldn't say or do in their
everyday life. It's very satisfying to step into another character for a while, even (or
especially) for a grown-up.

Halloween seems to serve a valuable function for many children and adults. It continues
to be so popular because it fills our basic need to address the mysteries that frighten us
and even celebrate them. It is a real testament to the power of Halloween traditions that
they have been passed down and embraced by so many generations.