It’s early November. The leaves are slowly turning orange, people are taking their winter coats from their closets and all over the UK, people have just celebrated Halloween, in the form of costumes, sweets, or horror movies. Halloween has become so commercialised that people are beginning to forget its original meaning and purpose, if you ask a person on the street what Halloween is some will smile “trick or treating” they reply, “sweets” others say. However, only in the past few hundred years has this become our version of Halloween.

Halloween originated thousands of years ago in the Celtic festival of Samhain. This was a festival to mark the beginning of the “darker half” of the year and the end of the harvest season, it is mentioned in some of the earliest known Irish literature and has been found to have played a big part in their lifestyle, as a time when livestock were slaughtered, and it was believed that ghosts of the dead returned to earth, this festival already had an eerie sense to it.

Samhain was mostly ended once the Romans came to power, but they also had their own version: Feralia, a day where the Roman people would mourn and pay tribute to their dead. It is thought that the Celtic tradition combined with the original Roman celebration and Feralia was the result.

In 609 A.D., the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was introduced. In the 1000 A.D, this then evolved into All Souls Day, another day to commemorate the dead, in which there were parades, bonfires and people would dress up as saints, devils and angels. This celebration was commonly referred to as All-Hallows or All-Hallowmas which originated from the middle English term “Alholowmesse” which meant All Saints Day.

As the beliefs and traditions of England spread across the world, they were altered and changed by the already celebrated traditions in those places. In the first half of the 19th century in America, the name Halloween evolved, along with the telling of ghost stories and “play parties” where neighbours would dance, sing and celebrate the harvest.

In the late 1800s, the Halloween that we know today began to emerge. Children began to trick or treat and many of Halloween’s religious and superstitious messages were forgotten. Now, as we look back on yet another Halloween, it is important to remember the ancient traditions  as well as enjoying our own, much loved festivities now.

By Mia Cooper-Ueki, Dunraven school