Have you wondered why people dress up in custom in Halloween? Why children go trick ‘o treat? Also, why people carve pumpkins vs. zucchini or other vegetables…and why they are “spooky” faces? I decided to research on them for my Toastmaster speech, “Fun and Why of Halloween”, let me share with you what I’ve found…
According to The Fact Shop , there were two theories of Halloween custom. One came from the Celts (people who lived around 2000 years ago in Ireland and England)’s festival called Samhain. Samhain took place on October 31st, the end of summer and beginning of winter, November 1 and the season of death of many people. The Celtic people believed the dead and the living merged together the night before in October 31st. In the celebration, they would wear costumes, most commonly made from animal skin and heads. The hiding of their appearances and faces, some historians noted was because that the Celts believed that animal rather than human could communicate with spirits and the dead more easily during Samhain. Other sources suggested that people could ask for food or money without being recognized.
The other theory of the costume came from Catholic Church during medieval times displaying relics of the holy saints on All Saints’ Day, November 1. While the wealthy churches could afford, the poor churches had to be “creative” in order to participate. Instead of building the relics, the poor church people would dress in costume as the saints. Other people would dress as devils and angles and they would perform the ceremony the night before All Saints’ Day.
As for the trick ‘o treat, according to The Fact Shop ‘In the 15th Century and later on, children would visit houses singing songs or reciting poetry in a bid to get fruit, cakes and money from housewives’. Later Irish and English immigrants brought the traditions and holidays into USA. Entrepreneurs have made Halloween a cash-cow business: over a billion dollar spending each year in America of adult and children Halloween costumes (adult ~$1.5 billion, children ~$1.2 billion), wow!
Next, let’s talk about the star fruit of Halloween, Pumpkin. Two interesting things I learned from Britannica: Jack-o’-Lanterns and carving of spooky face. Jack was a farmer who loved to drink and tricked devil to become a coin. He kept the coin by a silver cross so the devil couldn’t change back to its original form – the devil wasn’t happy about it. When Jack died, god didn’t let him to go to heaven and devil wouldn’t want him in the hell so he would roam the earth for eternity. People in Ireland started to carve scary faces, out of turnips, potatoes, and beets, and put them outside to door to “scare” away Jack’s wandering soul. When the immigrants came to USA and found pumpkin, native to the region and a seasonable crop, they switched.
What a fun discovery & learning of Halloween!