The Origins of Halloween

Halloween, the scariest holiday on the calendar and also one of the sweetest, is associated with candies, costumes, and pumpkins. When asked about the origins of this holiday's most people jump to the Mexican tradition of: ‘El Dia De Los Muertos’, which translated to the day of the dead and is celebrated on the first of November. However, this is not the origin of this popular holiday. Although we currently celebrate this holiday on an almost global scale, it originated with the Celts in the regions of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Originally the holiday was referred to as ‘All Hallows Eve’ and it was the equivalent of New Year's Eve. For the Celts, the year ended when summer and the harvest came to an end, and the new year would begin with winter. Their culture believed that All Hallows Eve was the only night where the living, which represented the harvest, and the dead, associated with winter, would come together. This was the only night where the boundaries between both worlds would blur allowing for spirits to walk amongst the living.

Most of the Halloween traditions we know originated around this traditional night where the Celts would try to scare off the ghosts as well as perform rituals to predict the following year, especially the harvest. Druids believed that this night was the best night to make specific and accurate predictions, so they would start large sacred bonfires where people would sacrifice crops and animals to predict the future. The tradition of wearing costumes also originated in Celtic culture, as they would wear animal skins and masks whilst they danced around the bofired to scare off ghosts and foretell each other's futures.

As the world became more connected with each millennial, the tradition of ‘All Hallows Eve’ began to fuse with other cultures until it became the holiday we now celebrate on the 31st of October, Halloween. If you want to warm up to this scary holiday, we recommend reading some creepy and scary novels you can find in our online library www.mediabinn.com.