Ep.62: Why Do We Celebrate Halloween?

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to improve their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. 

Today we will talk a little bit about Halloween because it is one of the favorite holidays in the anglophone world. Actually, when I asked my American friend Allison about her favorite holiday of the year, she said Halloween. Not Christmas. Can you imagine? 

In the Czech Republic, October and November are the months of scary stories, candles and spirits. And of course, we have Halloween costume parties and it has been more and more popular as time goes on but we don’t celebrate it really, do we? So I was thinking that we could look at the history of Halloween. Where does it come from? And how exactly is it celebrated nowadays? Let’s get into it.

Halloween originally started as an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”). The Celts were a group of people from northern Europe that lived in what is now the United Kingdom and Ireland around 2,000 years ago. Samhain was celebrated as their New Year on November 1st.

The festival marked the shift from the warm summer to the cold, dark winter months. The Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the spirits of the dead would return to visit the living for one night.

As part of the Samhain festivities, people lit large bonfires and wore costumes. They believed this was a special night when they could predict the future, and that the bonfires and costumes would help them see each other’s fortunes. They thought about the spirits and always considered them being kind because they were the souls of their relatives. The Celts would set out places at the table, leave food on doorsteps, and light candles to help guide their loved ones home for the night before they returned to the spirit world.

On the day after Samhain, people would take fire from the sacred bonfire home, believing it would protect them through the winter.

Years later, after the Romans invaded, because the Romans invaded the Celtic territory and ruled it, Christianity spread among the Celts. By the 9th century, Celtic and Christian customs blended, including the Samhain festival. The church renamed November 1st as „All Souls’ Day,“ which became a day to honor the dead. So here is how this custom was blended into Christian celebrations as well. 

People started to put on plays to celebrate the harvest season, telling stories, singing, and dancing about the dead. Many of these traditions came from the Samhain festival, while others came from Native American practices. People would also predict each other’s futures, play pranks, and tell ghost stories. You can think of it like a smoothie of customs and traditions – something came from the Samhain, something from the Native American practices and some was just slowly being added as the time went by.

As Halloween spread across America, especially with the arrival of Irish immigrants (descendants of the Celts), new traditions formed. Because a lot of Irish came to the USA and with them also the Irish traditions. The first big wave of Irish people coming to the USA was between 1750 and 1850. In England and Ireland, people would dress up and go door to door asking for food or money on All-Hallows Eve. In America, this became the practice of trick-or-treating.

In ancient England, people believed that ghosts returned on All-Hallows Eve. To avoid being recognized by them, those who had to go outside would wear costumes to disguise themselves as ghosts, hoping to be mistaken for spirits. Another Celtic tradition was to leave food outside to please the spirits so they wouldn’t try to enter the home. This eventually evolved into modern trick-or-treating. What is trick-or-trating? It is a Halloween practice in which children wearing costumes go from door to door in a neighborhood saying „trick or treat“ when a door is opened to ask for treats with the threat of playing tricks on those who refuse. So if you don’t give children their sweets when they come trick-or-treating, they can throw toilet paper or for example eggs at your house and no one wants that. That is why the majority of people usually offer a wide variety of sweets.

Another Halloween superstition involves black cats. In the Middle Ages, people believed that witches could escape by turning into black cats, which led to the belief that crossing paths with one brought bad luck.

In the late 1800s, Halloween changed as many people turned more religious. They began to focus on Halloween as a time for community gatherings instead of celebrating the dead. People held parties with games, treats, and costumes. Community leaders encouraged people to wear cheerful costumes instead of scary ones, and soon children were dressing up in fun or silly outfits. By the early 1900s, Halloween had lost most of its religious and superstitious elements.

In the 1950s and 1960s, after World War II, there was a „baby boom“ in America, and Halloween parties that used to be held in town centers were now moved to schools and homes to include children even more. Today, Halloween is a huge American tradition, second only to Christmas, with millions of dollars spent each year on candy and decorations.

So what are some American Halloween traditions? Apart from trick-or-treating and wearing costumes that I have already mentioned, we can’t forget about pumpkin carving. Children hollow the pumpkins out (that means that they take out the seeds and so on from the inside of the pumpkin) and carve different images or scary faces into it. I don’t think I need to explain further. However, it is quite interesting that once we carve out the pumpkin, we no longer call it that, we call it Jack-o’-lantern. 

Where does this tradition come from and why do we call it that? A long time ago in Ireland, people used to carve faces into turnips instead of pumpkins. This tradition comes from a spooky story about a man named Stingy Jack. Jack tricked the Devil many times and made him promise not to take him to Hell. But when Jack died, he couldn’t go to Heaven either because they didn’t want his soul,  so he had to walk around as a ghost forever. The Devil gave Jack a glowing coal inside a turnip to help him see in the dark. People in Ireland started carving scary faces in turnips to scare away bad spirits. Later it turned into pumpkin carving.

The last tradition I am going to mention here is called “bobbing for apples”. Bobbing for apples is a fun Halloween game. Here’s how it works: you fill a big tub or bucket with water and put apples in it so they float on top. Then, players take turns trying to grab an apple using only their mouths—no hands allowed! They have to bite the apple while it’s floating, which can be tricky because the apple keeps moving around. It’s a playful challenge, and whoever grabs an apple first wins. It’s a classic game often played at Halloween parties.

Have you ever celebrated Halloween? I have never really celebrated it, only when I was on my erasmus in France, I celebrated a little with my friend Audrey. We changed into a costume, got some fake blood and then we went into the city for food and drinks. It was quite fun but not really anything fancy. 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I hope you liked it. If you need any help, check out the transcription, you have everything there.  Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and I will see you next time, bye-bye.

Source:

The history of Halloween for kids: Bedtime history: Podcast and videos for kids: Homework help. Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids. https://bedtimehistorystories.com/the-history-of-halloween-for-kids/