History of Halloween: From Celts to candy

Dressing up in your favorite costume, playing pranks on your friends and family, watching scary movies and telling scary stories with all of your friends: these are just a few fun things we do every year when it's Oct. 31. But have you ever stopped to wonder how this crazy holiday got its start?

Halloween's beginning dates back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on Nov. 1. This day marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter, a time that they associated with human death. The Celts believed that on that night, the worlds between the living and the dead became unclear.

They believed that on the day before the new year, Oct. 31, the dead would return back to Earth. When the Roman Empire took over the Celtic territory in 43 A.D., they celebrated a two-day festival that integrated the traditional celebration of Samhain.

The first day was called Feralia, a day when the Romans remembered the passing of the dead. The second day was to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. This is where the modern practice of bobbing for apples most likely came from.

All Souls' Day came around in 1000 A.D. and was celebrated very similar to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and revelers dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Souls' Day celebration was also known as All Saints Day or All-hallows, eventually to be named, Halloween.

Celebrations of Halloween in the United States were very limited in colonial New England because of strict Protestant beliefs. However, Halloween was more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

These early celebrations included "play parties" that were attended by a group of different European ethnic groups and American Indians. Colonial Halloween celebrations also included singing and dancing, telling stories of the dead, telling each other's fortunes, and mischief-making of all kinds.

When millions of Irish immigrants fled to the United States after the potato famine in 1846, they brought many traditions with them that helped popularize Halloween. Thanks to the Irish's influence, Americans began dressing up and going from door to door asking for food or money. Naturally, this is where trick-or-treating derived from.

In the late 1800s, parents were encouraged by town leaders to take out anything "frightening" from celebrations and to focus on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Because of these mandates, Halloween lost most of its superstitious symbolism until the early 1900s.

By the 1920s, Halloween became a community-centered holiday. Later, because of the high number of births during the Baby Boom of the Fifties and early Sixties, Halloween catered mainly to the younger children. Trick-or-treating became even more popular, with communities viewing it as an inexpensive bonding activity among their younger residents.

In addition to the fun and games that Halloween brings every year, there are many superstitions that have been associated with the holiday. Children are told never to cross paths with a cat because they're really witches in disguise.

Similarly, walking under ladders is said to bring seven years of bad luck. This is thought to come from the Egyptians because they believed that triangles were sacred. We also try not to break mirrors, spill salt or step on cracks in the road.

Whether you're avoiding getting seven years of bad luck or just settling down on the couch with a big bowl of candy in anticipation of some trick-or-treaters, try to remember the Celts this Halloween. If it wasn't for them, this would be just another weekend in October.