History of All Saints Day

On May 13 ^th 609 A.D, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to honour all Christian Martyrs, and thus the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was entrenched within the Western Church. Pope Gregory III would later expand this festival to include All Saints Day too, as well as all Martyr’s day, and moved the date from May 13 ^th to November 1 ^st. Another event known as All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as the saints, angels, and devils.

The All Saints’ Day celebration was also known as All-Hallows or All-Hallowmas, which was derived from the Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day, and the Night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celt’s region began to be known Al-Hallows Eve, and eventually, known as Halloween as we know it today!

Halloween Arriving in America

America’s celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems. Instead, Halloween was a lot more common in Maryland and the Southern Colonies. As time progressed and the various beliefs and customs of different European Ethnic Groups and American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween emerged. Some of the first celebrations included “play parties”, which were public events held to celebrate the harvest, in which Neighbours would tell tales and stories of the dead, as well as tell fortunes, dance, and sing.

One of the other main festivities featured in Colonial Halloween was the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19 ^th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was yet to be celebrated everywhere within the country. During the second half of the 19 ^th century, America was flooded with new immigrants, most of which were the millions that fled the Irish Potato Famine. Subsequently, this mass immigration helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally!

A History of Halloween Trick-or-Treating

Taking inspiration from European Traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and would go house to house asking for either food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. During the late 1800s, a movement commenced in America to solidify Halloween into a national holiday that targeted and was more about community and neighbourly get-togethers than being focused strictly on Ghosts, Pranks, and Witchcraft. By the next century, Halloween parties for both adults and children respectively, became the most common way to celebrate the day, involving days focusing on games, seasonal foods of the times, and festive costumes.

It was told that parents were encouraged by circulating local newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” and remove them from Halloween celebrations, and due to these efforts, have caused Halloween to lose a lot of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the 20 ^th century!

Halloween Parties

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a community-centred holiday that involved parades, town-wide Halloween parties and more that featured as the entertainment for the day. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague the celebrations of many communities during this time.

The age-old practice and event of Trick-or-Treating were also revived between the time periods of the 1920s and 1950s, Trick-or-Treating being a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. Families, in theory, could also prevent tricks from being played on them by providing the children who knocked on their doors with small treats like candy, bringing about the tradition that continues onwards today. Americans annually spend around $6 billion annually on Halloween, being the country’s second-largest holiday before Christmas!

Halloween Movies

In terms of commercial success, Scary Halloween movies have a long history of being box office hits, Classic Halloween movies include “Halloween”, a 1978 John Carpenter film staring Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Donald Pleasance as Doctor Loomis, and Nick Castle as ‘The Shape’ or more commonly and famously known as Michael Myers, the silent killer of Halloween night.

Spawning 8 movies during its run time, 2 remakes including 2 films by Rob Zombie, and having John Carpenter hopping back to finish the series with his new “Halloween” (2018), “Halloween Kills” (2021), and finally finishing with “Halloween Ends” coming this October in 2022, the original Halloween is responsible for spawning the classic slasher films of the 1980s and 1990s, featuring other timeless classics such as “Nightmare on Elm Street”, “Friday the 13^th”, “Scream” and money more.

Whilst those are much tougher, adult-targeted films, there were a lot of classic family-friendly films such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Beetlejuice”, and “Hocus Pocus”, Halloween is a season that truly everyone can enjoy together!

Black Cats, Ghosts, and Superstitions for the Halloween Season

Being a Holiday all about frights, mystery and magic, Halloween has naturally always been a superstitious holiday period, beginning as a Celtic end-of-summer festival too during a time when people felt especially close and connected to deceased relatives and friends. To help these friendly spirits of ones once with us, people would lay places at the dinner table, leave treats on doorsteps, and would candles alongside the road in order to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Halloween Ghosts by today’s standards are often depicted as malevolent, evil, and feared spirits, resulting in our customs to superstitions growing scarier too. Avoiding crossing a path with Black Cats for fear of bad luck is a prime example. This was an idea rooted deep within the Middle Ages, as many believed that Witches would avoid being detected by turning themselves into Black Cats.

Whereas other classic superstitions such as avoiding walking under ladders originated from Ancient Egyptians, who believed Triangles were sacred, although superstitions aside, walking under Ladders is genuinely a dangerous concern for a safety hazard! Other classic superstitions people avoid are breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks on the pavement or the road, and spilling salt!

And there you have it, an insightful look into Halloween history, traditions, and roots throughout the world, hopefully, you learned something new and enjoyed reading, and we hope that you’ll continue to celebrate Halloween amongst your family and friends this year, and to check out Cazaars’ Halloween selection for you to celebrate with tradition and joy for every Halloween you celebrate!