It is the beginning of October, the spookiest of all months; when ghouls and ghosts come ready to haunt the living and we gleefully open them with open arms. Costume ideas fill the mind while pumpkin patches come to life with eager carvers and candy aisles become battlegrounds. But have you ever stopped to wonder how this eerie, sugar-fueled celebration came to be? Because let’s be honest: carving up vegetables, lighting them from within, and leaving them to rot on our porches is a little weird. And don’t even get started on taking candy from strangers. Yet here we are, year after year, embracing the strange and spooky with delight.
The origin of Halloween can be traced back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, a spooky time to mark the end of harvest and where the veil of the living and the dead supposedly became a bit thinner. To protect their loved ones, the Celtics would leave offerings of food and drinks, specifically in areas where one would easily cross, like doorways or crossroads. Over time this tradition evolved into something a bit more sweet but dangerous. People would dress up and go door to door begging for food from the harvest. So alas, the fun tradition of dressing up as ghouls and goblins was once a tradition for people to give away their left-over harvest food to protect themselves from the threats of getting killed by beggars, or just to help those in need.
Now when it comes to pumpkins, it gets a little spookier. When hearing the story of Stingy Jack and how he escaped his judgment day, it might make one think a little differently about the old Jack-o-Lantern. Based on the tradition of carving in Ireland, it all started with the legend of Stingy Jack capturing the Devil, not letting the fallen angel free until he promised that Jack would never end up down below. What Jack didn’t realize was that when the Devil agreed, he would never be able to meet his judgment day. Never truly being able to go above or below, he was condemned to roam the earth as a ghost for all eternity. It was believed that later they added lanterns to fend off any roaming ghosts like Jack. This tradition did start with turnips, but along the way after Jack, Jack-o-Lanterns took root.
When it comes to bobbing apples, it may seem like a good idea—unless one somehow went back in time to when this fun carnival game first appeared. Originally, Halloween was a way for women to test their love and get ready for a future man willed by the spirits. It was once said that the first women to get their apples would be the ones to be married next. However, whoever was brave enough to do it had to deal with a twist. Apples weren’t in the water originally, instead being hung from a string, where then on the board that the apples were suspended from would be a candle. The women would then be blindfolded and had to dodge other apples or candles trying to wack them. This was also a harvest tradition, and they would use other nuts or corn that they harvested.
Along those lines of harvest and woman preparing for love, another relationship test was putting different kinds of chestnuts and other kinds of harvest goods by the fire, not only to add a spiced aroma to the house, but to see if the relationship would last or not. It was said that if anything exploded from the heat over night then the relationship would not last.
Zoe Booth is a Dakota Student General Reporter. She can be reached at [email protected].
