Halloween History and Traditions Old and New Research Paper

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Halloween has become one of the most beloved, and certainly spookiest, of all holidays in North America. Although Halloween technically traces its roots back two thousand years, its current incarnation as a costumed event filled with candy, horror movies, and haunted houses is relatively new. This paper will inform readers about the history and meaning of Halloween traditions, showing how they evolved over time. Halloween represents the blend between the ancient and the modern, just as it signifies the blurring of the lines between the dead and the living.

Originally called Samhain, Halloween started as a Celtic, pre-Christian, pagan festival held around October 31 or November 1 each year to commemorate the end of the autumnal harvest (Radford 1). The tradition evolved in a geographic region with a stark change of seasons and a dark, long winter, and so the end of the harvest season would have been a challenging time for the people of the ancient British Isles. When Samhain traditions began two thousand years ago, there was little in the way of advanced technologies that could have promoted food security throughout the winter. The people lived off the land using subsistence agriculture. When fall turned to winter around the same time each year, farmers had to gather whatever crops were still left in the field, bring the animals to shelter through the winter, and prepare for months of darkness and meager supplies (Radford 1). The symbols used in modern Halloween celebrations such as the carved pumpkin are remnants of the connection to the holiday’s ancient roots as a seasonal, end-of-harvest tradition. The transition between autumn and winter was therefore a dark and scary time for the ancients, perhaps leading to the belief that this was also when the lines between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred (Radford 1). The earth shifted from being life-giving to being barren for months, providing the people with an opportunity to consider what happens when the human body passes away and the soul moves on. Therefore, Halloween has long been a holiday that merges an agricultural celebration with a supernatural one.

While the pumpkin imagery links modern Halloween with the agricultural festival, the imagery of ghouls, ghosts, and supernatural creatures shows how the holiday has always been about death and other deeply rooted human fears.

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Some historians believe that Samhain was about communicating with the dead, and others believe it was about “scaring away the ghosts and spirits” that might haunt the earth and its living creatures (“The History of Halloween: How It All Started,” 1). As Christianity encroached on Ireland and the British Isles, it became necessary to merge ancient pagan Celtic traditions with the myths and holidays of the new religion in order to ensure conformity and social control (Cain 1). To allow the people to continue practicing their age-old traditions, Christian leaders like Pope Gregory IV made Hallowmas or All Hallow’s Day—later called Halloween--a formal holiday in 837 (Cain 1). Prior to Pope Gregory’s degree, All Saint’s Day was actually a springtime holiday (Cain 1). Switching All Saint’s Day to November 1 allowed the Pope to effectively blend the pagan traditions with the Christian ones. Thus, All Saint’s Day was the Christian part of the holiday—the day on which the hallowed—the holy—were to be commemorated on November 1. The night prior to All Hallow’s Day was therefore All Hallow’s Eve and the time during which the people could give expression to their fears about death and the unknown. Modern Halloween traditions capitalize mainly on the pagan elements of the holiday, focusing on frightening imagery.

Modern motifs of Halloween include the Jack O’Lantern and the Haunted House. Both of these elements evolved over time, but the Jack O’Lantern is the older of the two. The Jack O’Lantern is the ultimate symbol of Halloween, as it takes the harvest festival motif of the pumpkin and transforms that into a fearful figure from Irish folk history (Cain 1). On the….....

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