Halloween, which has become more popular among young people in recent years, has a dark and twisted origin!
The holiday has been celebrated for centuries over time, and Halloween traditions have evolved, but where exactly did these traditions come from?
The origins of Halloween can be traced back to 2,000 years ago with a festival called Shoin Day.
Shoin Day was the New Year of the Celts who lived in what is now Ireland, England and northern France.
It is a Celtic festival that marks the end of summer, the harvest and the beginning of winter.
Because winter is the season of the year when many people die, the Celts believe that the line between the living and the dead will become blurred on New Year's Eve.
So, every year on the evening of October 31, they celebrate Shoin Day in the hope of the return of the spirits of the dead.
The Celts believed that returning spirits of the dead would make it easier for Celtic priests to predict the future.
This is important for Celtic because it's about their fortune in the new year.
To celebrate Shoin, crops and livestock were burned around bonfires as a sacrifice to the gods from the Celts.
In addition, the Celts would wear costumes made of animal heads and hides and tell fortunes to each other.
At the end of the festivities, people rekindle the fire from the bonfire, believing that it will be protected.
In 43 AD, the Roman Empire conquered most of the Celtic lands and ruled the Celts for 400 years.
During the reign, two Roman festivals were fused with the festival of Sauin.
The first Roman festival was the Faralia Festival, which was held at the end of October each year to commemorate the dead ancestors of the Romans.
The second Roman festival is the festival of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees, who marked apples in Rome, which is perhaps the reason why apples are bought today on Halloween.
In addition to this, there are several different theories about the origin of Halloween.
In conclusion, Halloween later spread to the United States, but it was not popular in the early days, especially in the New England region of the United States.
Over time, people from different countries and Native Americans traveled to the United States and brought with them their respective customs.
This was the beginning of Halloween in the United States.
The earliest Halloween celebrations in the United States were known as game parties and were collective events to celebrate a good harvest.
Locals sing and dance and tell ghost stories to play tricks on each other.
At the end of the 19th century, many new Irish immigrants to the United States accelerated the American Halloween pandemic.
Americans began to dress up and go from house to house asking for food or money.
However, this activity has become a blatant form of blackmail.
Later, Americans wanted to turn Halloween into a holiday that focused more on community and neighborhood gatherings.
So, at the beginning of the 20th century, Halloween parties changed to children's games.
Parents are encouraged in the United States to wear scary or ugly costumes during Halloween celebrations.
Through efforts on all fronts, Halloween in the United States has been freed from most of its superstitions and religious meanings.
In the late 20s of the 20th century, Halloween eventually became a holiday without religious overtones.
Still, there are American schools and communities trying to stop Halloween.
This move brought opposition from all sides, and the masses began to destroy things on Halloween.
In the 50s of the 20th century, mass vandalism in the United States was finally stopped, and Halloween was declared a holiday for children only.
Today, Americans spend $6 billion a year on Halloween, making it the second-largest business holiday in the United States, after Christmas.
What about Halloween without Halloween costumes!
Halloween costumes originated in Europe and the Celts, when Europeans and Celts believed that the spirits of the dead would return to the human world, and in order to avoid being recognized by the spirits, they would wear masks.
On Halloween, to keep the spirits of the dead away from their houses, they place food in front of their homes to appease hungry souls.
In Ireland, rings are hidden in mashed potatoes on Halloween night, and whoever finds the ring is the first to get married.
In Scotland, girls would name each suitor a hazelnut and throw it into the fireplace, with the burnt hazelnut representing their future husband.
Now, Halloween has become a worldwide celebration thanks to those business wizards!