The Hauntings of Halloween!

Ever wonder how Halloween came into existence? Me too. Well, I just researched about it and I’ll tell you what I learned.

Halloween wasn’t always a fun candy-making holiday, it came all the way from Greece! When Halloween was first celebrated, it was called All Saints Day, then All Hallows Eve, then Halloween. People wore masks and danced around a bonfire, believing that they would scare spirits away.

Pumpkin carving

They carved turnips instead of pumpkins, as there was old folklore that there was a man named stingy Jack and repeatedly trapped the devil to make sure he went to heaven. But after finding out heaven thought he was bad, he was forced to move along the earth, with only a lump of coal in a radish. Eventually, people carved scary faces into radishes to scare Jack away, but eventually became a story of a headless horseman and people carved the scary faces into pumpkins instead. If Jack comes back we’re done for!

From ghosts to costumes

In Celtic times, they thought during the harvest,they thought ghosts roamed the world. So, they put on scary costumes to scare them away. (Not sure about that logic) Eventually, kids started a tradition called trick or treating which they would put on cute or terrifying costumes and either coaxed or scared the soul out of other people to give candy. Otherwise, tricks!

Black cats

This is my least favorite tradition, people kill black cats on halloween, just because they were associated with witches. They were viewed as unlucky and were partners of witches. So, naturally, people and their sick minds started mindlessly getting rid of them. Some people still do it, but it mainly stopped and black cats are now safe.

This is what I learned; thanks for reading!

(credits go to Google and Library of Congress blog)