Halloween – Why do we celebrate it?
It is officially spooky season as Halloween is coming up on the 31st of October. Every year we have special traditions such as dressing up, putting decorations around our house, going trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving. You would have seen decorations be put up in shops and lots of places selling pumpkins and toffee apples. But why do we celebrate Halloween?
The celebration dates back to Pagan times at the Celtic festival of Samhain. The festival was a celebration of death and symbolised the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The evening or night of Samhain therefore become known as ‘All-Hallows-Even’ which eventually became ‘Halloween’.
During this evening they would light bonfires in every village to ward off any bad spirits or evil that may be at large. This was because they believed that ghosts of their dead would revisit the mortal world so they hoped that the fires would keep them away.
Throughout Britain, Halloween has been celebrated with bobbing for apples, telling ghost stories and carving faces into vegetables. However, carving into pumpkins is a much more recent tradition, originally vegetables like turnips were used.
Why do we carve Pumpkins?
The story goes that someone called Jack also known as ‘Stingy Jack’ tricked the Devil for his own gain. As his punishment he wasn’t allowed to go to heaven or hell when he died so had to stay on earth for eternity. People then carved scary faces into turnips to scare him away. When this tradition moved to the US, they used pumpkins instead. Therefore, some people call them Jack O’Lanterns.
Halloween in recent years has become a mass market holiday. This is due to the boom of Halloween films, TV shows and confectionary being produced every year. So, now you can enjoy the Halloween celebrations knowing a bit more about the history of the day and what it all means!
Happy Halloween
