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- When Is Halloween 2023?
- Ancient History of Halloween
- All Saints' Day
- How Did Halloween Start in America?
- History of Trick-Or-Treating
- Halloween Parties
- Halloween Movies
- All Souls Day and Soul Cakes
- Black Cats and Ghosts on Halloween
- Halloween Matchmaking and Lesser-Known Rituals
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Halloween is celebrated each year on October 31. Halloween 2023 will take place on Tuesday, October 31.
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a ti...
On May 13, A.D. 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheonin Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III 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...
The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Marylandand the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emer...
Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors....
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully lim...
Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movieshave a long history of being box office hits. Classic Halloween movies include the “Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young boy named Michael Myers murder...
The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encourage...
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help lov...
But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—wi...
Learn about the origins, meaning and customs of Halloween, a holiday celebrated on October 31 with costumes, treats and tricks. Find out how Halloween evolved from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain to a national celebration in America.
Halloween or Hallowe'en [7] [8] (less commonly known as Allhalloween, [9] All Hallows' Eve, [10] or All Saints' Eve) [11] is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day.
- First day of Allhallowtide
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Jun 30, 2022 · June 30, 2022, 1:09 PM PDT / Updated Oct. 27, 2023, 8:06 AM PDT. By Sarah Lemire. Costumes and trick-or-treating might be the stars of Halloween, but they're really just the tip of the witch's...
Oct 31, 2019 · Whether you're staying cozy indoors or venturing outdoors, find fun and spooky things to do on Halloween night. From pumpkin carving and candy making to costume parties and haunted houses, here are 30 ideas for all ages and tastes.
