Halloween. It’s the spookiest time of year and we love it.
But have you ever wondered where our favourite traditions come from? We have. And so here are our top ten favourite pieces of Halloween history trivia.
1. Halloween is the start of a three day Christian celebration called Allhallowtide, which is dedicated to remembering the dead. This includes faithful Christian believers, martyrs, and saints or “hallows”. Hence the name.
2. Halloween is not the only celebration based around the end of October and the beginning of November. It has to share with a lot of traditional Celtic festivals, such as Samhain, Calan Gaef, Allantide and Hop-tu-Naa, as well as the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations.
3. Trick-or-treating is older than you think! As far back as the Middle Ages, poor people and children would go from door to door on Halloween to sing and say prayers for the dead in exchange for treats. Although instead of sweets or chocolate, they got small spiced fruit cakes called ‘soul cakes’. Each cake eaten represented one soul freed from purgatory. And this was still going on in the 1930s!
4. Why do we wear costumes for Halloween? One theory says it’s poking fun at Satan by dressing up as creatures that used to scare us. And other costumes and decorations, such as skeletons, act as a memento mori, something that reminds us that we all die someday. And pop culture costumes? Well they’re just for fun!
5. Before the discovery of pumpkins, people used to carve turnips or beets into jack-o’-lanterns. They switched to pumpkins because they’re much softer and easier to shape.
6. Ever wondered why a jack-o’-lantern is called that? The story goes that a clever man called Jack managed to trap Satan and agreed to release him only if Satan never took his soul. When Jack died, he was too sinful to enter Heaven, but he couldn’t go to Hell either. Instead, he was left to endlessly wander the world in search of rest, lighting his way with a carved turnip lamp. And so he became known as Jack of the Lantern, or Jack-o’-lantern!
7. Halloween is a great time for games, and some of the most popular are also forms of fortune-telling. One of the most popular was for unmarried women. On Halloween night, sit in a darkened room and stare into a mirror. The face of the person you’ll marry should appear there. But if you see a skull, beware – it means you’re destined to die before you marry!
8. Halloween is a popular time to release horror movies due to the spooky atmosphere. The biggest example of this is the Saw series, which came out at Halloween every year between 2004 and 2010.
9. Despite it being traditionally the time for scares, only one of the three films with the best October opening weekends is a horror flick: Paranormal Activity 3. The others are sci-fi thriller Gravity, and Jackass 3-D.
10. Halloween is traditionally a day to avoid meat. This is why many of the foods associated with Halloween are vegetarian friendly. This includes treats like cinder toffee, candy corn, caramel apples and pumpkin bread.
Do you know any cool facts about Halloween? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter (@HerCampusCCCU) or in the comments!