Its 2014 and its Halloween Season all over the place. What does Halloween mean to you?
Halloween can be traced back about 2,000 years to an October 31st Gaelic festival called Samhain (pronounced "Sah-win"), which means "summer's end" in Gaelic. The exact nature of Samhain is not fully understood, but it was an annual gathering at the end of the harvest year, a time to gather resources for the winter months.
According to Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University and author of "Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night," "there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship, despite claims to the contrary by some American folklorists, some of whom have presumed that the feast was devoted to Saman, the god of the dead."
Samhain was less about death or evil than about the changing of seasons and preparing for the dormancy (and rebirth) of nature as summer turned to winter.
As modern Halloween, folklorist Jack Santino, writing in "American Folklore: An Encyclopedia," notes that "Halloween beliefs and customs were brought to North America with the earliest Irish immigrants, then by the great waves of Irish immigrants fleeing the famines of the first half of the nineteenth century. Halloween has become largely a children's holiday."
Through the ages various supernatural entities including fairies and witches came to be associated with Halloween, and over a century ago in Ireland the event was said to be a time when spirits of the dead could return to their old haunting grounds. Dressing up as ghosts or witches became fashionable, though as the holiday became more widespread and more commercialized (and with the arrival of mass-manufactured costumes) the selection of disguises for kids and adults greatly expanded beyond monsters to include everything from superheroes to princesses to politicians.
By the late 1800's, the tradition of playing pranks on Halloween was well established. Halloween mischief in the United States and Canada consisted of tipping over outhouses, unhinging farmer's gates, throwing eggs at houses and other similar pranks. By the 1920's and '30s, however, the celebration had become more like a rowdy party, and the acts of vandalism more severe.
To stem the vandalism, concerned parents and town leaders tried to satiate the kids with candy, encouraging trick-or-treating in costume in exchange for sweets, removing the mischief element from the celebration. It was then that the troublemakers adopted October 30th as their day for pranks.
However, Halloween was as much a time for festivities and games as for playing tricks or asking for treats. Apples are associated with Halloween, both as a treat and in the game of bobbing for apples. It was believed that the first person to pluck an apple form the water-filled bucket without the use of the hands would be the first to marry.
Apples were also part of another form of marriage prophesy. On Halloween, young women would peel an apple into one continuous strip and throw it over her shoulder. The apple skin would supposedly land in the shape of the first letter of her future husband's name.
Another Halloween ritual involved looking in a mirror at midnight by candlelight, for a future husband's face was said to appear (a scary variation of this later became the "Bloody Mary" ritual familiar to many schoolgirls). Like many such childhood games it was likely done in fun, though at least some people took it seriously.