Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)", derived from the Old Irish Samuin meaning "summer's end". [2]

Halloween is also thought to have been heavily influenced by the Christian holy days of All Saints' Day (also known as Hallowmas, All Hallows, Hallowtide) and All Souls' Day.^[4] Falling on November 1st and 2nd respectively, collectively they were a time for honoring the Saints and praying for the recently departed who had yet to reach heaven. By the end of the 12th century they had become days of holy obligation across Europe and involved such traditions as ringing bells for the souls in purgatory and "souling", the custom of baking bread or soul cakes for "all crysten [christened] souls". [2]

In Britain the rituals of Hallowtide and Halloween came under attack during the Reformation as protestants denounced purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the notion of predestination.^[4] In addition the increasing popularity of Guy Fawkes Night from 1605 on saw Halloween become eclipsed in Britain with the notable exception of Scotland. [2]

North American almanacs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century give no indication that Halloween was recognized as a holiday.^[8] The Puritans of New England, for example, maintained strong opposition to the holiday^[8] and it was not until the mass Irish and Scottish immigration during the 19th century that the holiday was introduced to the continent in earnest. [2]

The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even ("evening"), that is, the night before All Hallows Day.^[10] Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556. [2]

In North America, Halloween began to arrive in force in the 1840s. Rural immigrants from Ireland flooded into America and Canada because of the Great Potato Famine, and brought Halloween customs from their homeland. Nearly two million Irish men and women lived in the United States by 1890. [4]

History of Samhain:

Etymology: Samhain or “Samhuinn” is pronounced “sow-” (as in female pig) “-en” (with the neutral vowel sound) — not “Sam Hain” — because “mh” in the middle of an Irish word is a “w” sound... Samhain was the original festival that the Western Christian calendar moved its “All Saints’ Day” to (Eastern Christians continue to celebrate All Saints’ Day in the spring, as the Roman Christians had originally). Since the Celts, like many cultures, started every day at sunset of the night before, Samhain became the “evening” of “All Hallows” (“hallowed” = “holy” = “saint”) which was eventually contracted into “Hallow-e’en” or the modern “Halloween.” [1]

Human Sacrifices: Some have claimed that humans were among the offerings on Samhain. Writing of Celtic rituals in general, the famed Julius Caesar asserted that victims were placed in "wickerwork images of vast size," which were then set afire. This practice was depicted, in a contemporary setting, in the 1973 cult film The Wicker Man. Yet, in his exhaustive study The Druids, Peter Ellis argues, "The deduction one is really drawn to is that the idea of widespread human sacrifice among the Celts was mere Roman propaganda to support their imperial power in their invasion of Celtic lands and destruction of the Druids." [4]

Religious Value: Samhain is celebrated as a religious festival by some neopagans (Source: Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford, Blackwell. pp. 327–341. ISBN 0-631-18946-7.)  Celtic Neopagans consider the season a holy time of year. (Source: "A to Z of Halloween". The Limerick Leader. 2009-10-29. )  [3]

"Samhain, the Evil Lord of the Dead": While we will probably never know whether such nasty practices took place, we can put to rest the idea that Samhain was a bloody rite dedicated to "Samhain, the Lord of the Dead," a claim perpetuated by some Catholics and fundamentalist Christians. There was no "Samhain" deity in Celtic mythology, notes Isaac Bonewits, a specialist in ancient and modern Druidism. There may have been an obscure character named Samain or Sawan, renowned for his magical cow. He was not a god or "lord of the dead," however. [1] [4]

Connection to All Saint's Day: 

The fixing of the feast of All Saints on its current date of 1 November is attributed to Pope Gregory III (731–741), but from the testimony of Pseudo-Bede it is known that 1 November was already associated with All Saints in Great Britain by the beginning of the 8th century... It was only in 835 that Louis the Pious formally installed the festival on 1 November. In this, Louis merely made official the custom of celebrating the festival on 1 November which had been spread to the continent by the Anglo-Saxon mission, suggesting that the association of All Saints with 1 November is originally due to an Insular tradition. However, as Ronald Hutton points out, the willingness of James Frazer to trace the association further to pre-Christian Celtic polytheism is misguided because the testimony of Óengus of Tallaght (d. ca. 824) makes clear that the early medieval church in Ireland celebrated the feast of All Saints on 20 April. The earliest associations of 1 November with All Saints are thus found in 8th century sources of Northwestern Europe (Anglo-Saxon and German), while the earliest references to the Irish festival of Samhain are found in sources of Irish mythology compiled in the 10th century and later. [3]

... the Celts converted to Christianity, a process that began in England in the 4th century and in Ireland (with the arrival of St. Patrick) in the 5th century A.D. The Christian Church could not utterly abolish Samhain celebrations, so they co-opted them. Ultimately, they absorbed the Celtic holiday into the Catholic calendar... Pope Gregory IV (827-844 A.D.) changed the date of a festival honoring Christian saints to November 1 and called it the Feast of All Saints. The celebration of All Saint's Day became known as All Hallow Mass or Hallowmas in England. Accordingly, the night of October 31 became All Hallows Eve and absorbed the spirit of Samhain. "Hallows Evening" was eventually condensed to Halloween." [4]

Connection to All Soul's Day:

In Ireland and Scotland, the Féile na Marbh "festival of the dead" is the name of All Souls', a church festival introduced on the eve of All Saints in the 11th century. [3]

In 998, the French monastic order of Cluny initiated a mass for the souls of the Christian dead, later moved to the day after All Saints Day. The new feast day of All Souls held further resonance for Celts accustomed to Samhain, a time so linked to the spirits of the dead. By the end of the twelfth century, the festivals of All Saints and All Souls (together called Hallowtide in Great Britain), were well-established highlights of the Christian year. [4]

The church masses of Hallowtide served as insurance against hauntings, according to Rogers, "for ghosts were generally understood to be dead relatives who visited their kin to rectify wrongs committed against them while alive and to enforce the obligations of kinship." As night fell and All Souls' Day arrived, "bells were rung for the souls in purgatory." Across Catholic Europe, "food was laid out for the dead, whose souls were expected to return to their former abodes on All Souls' Day," a practice we see today in Mexico's Day Of The Dead. In England, candle and torch-lit processions honored the deceased and bonfires in graveyards discouraged the visitation of malicious spirits. [4]

Hallowmas fell out of favor in England during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, and All Souls' Day was eliminated from the calendar. Yet devotions to the dead persisted, and Catholics continued to light bonfires on hilltops and ring church bells for the departed. [4]

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 (731–741) 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. [5]

 

History of Trick or Treating:

Halloween Symbols & Traditions:

Several correspondents have said, “If the holiday isn’t evil why are there so many evil images associated with it” such as ghosts, skeletons, black cats, ugly witches, demons, monsters, and Jack O’Lanterns? The answer, of course, is that most of these images aren’t evil, and the ones that are negative were added by people opposed to the holiday. [1]

Black Cats & Witches: Medieval Christians feared cats, for reasons as yet unclear, and especially feared black cats who could sneak “invisibly” around at night. It’s ironic that they feared cats so much that they killed tens of thousands of them, leaving their granaries open to rats and mice, no doubt causing much food to be wasted, and leaving Europe as a whole wide open to the Black Plague, which was carried by the fleas on those rats and mice. Unfortunately, the millions of human deaths caused by the Black Plague were later blamed on the Diabolic Witches the Church invented, then murdered. Cats, as “evil” animals, then became associated with the “evil” witches. [1]

Death/the Dead/Skeletons & Skulls: Samhain was the time of year when the herds were culled. That means that farmers and herders killed the old, sick or weak animals, as well as others they didn’t think would make it through the winter with that year’s available food. Prior to the last few centuries in the West, most people lived with death as a common part of life, especially since most of them lived on farms. Samhain became imbued with symbolism of these annual deaths. So skeletons and skulls joined the ghosts as symbols of the holiday. [1]

Ghosts: Ghosts have always made perfect sense, for Samhain was the festival where the Gates Between the Worlds were open wide and departed friends and family could cross over in either direction. As I mentioned earlier, people invited their ancestors to join them in celebration. The only ones who would cower in fear would be people who had wronged someone dead and who therefore feared retribution of some sort. [1]

Jack O'Lanterns: Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. For instance, the carving of jack-o'-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory.^[11] The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween,^[12][13] but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips.^[12] The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837^[14] and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century. [2]  Candle lanterns (Gaelic: samhnag), carved from turnips, were part of the traditional festival. Large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces, placed in windows to ward off evil spirits [3] ...some carried hollowed-out turnips with a candle inside, representing a wandering spirit. These were called "jack-o'-lanterns" after an Irish legend about Jack, a man unwelcome in both heaven or hell, who was doomed to wander the earth eternally. [4]

The old ways began to change with foreign influence. The Romans invaded England in the first century A.D., and their festivals for Feralia (which commemorated the dead) and Pomona (the Roman goddess of fruits and trees) may have added light-hearted traditions such as apple-bobbing to Samhain. [4]