Why we celebrate Halloween with costumes, candy and scary movies

Hyderabad: Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31. This year, Halloween falls on a Friday, October 31. Although this festival is of foreign origin, there is an Indian version of Halloween, which is ‘Bhoot Chaturdashi’, celebrated in West Bengal the night before Diwali.

In cities like Hyderabad, clubs and restaurants make the most of Halloween to attract patrons, customers and teens, with spooky decorations, Halloween-themed food menus and eerie lighting.

Here’s a simple guide to understanding the tradition and its popular evolution in present times.

Origins of Halloween

The tradition of Halloween originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to predict the future.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires where people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically made of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

For people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honour all saints. Soon afterwards, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve and later became Halloween.

The end of summer

Halloween is celebrated to mark the end of summer and harvesting crops, and the beginning of the dark winter.

During this time, people believed the boundary between the living and the dead became blurred, and they wore costumes and lit bonfires to ward off spirits.

Christian and Roman traditions

Over time, Roman and later Christian traditions were incorporated. In the second half of the 19th century, the USA had many immigrants, especially the Irish. These new immigrants helped to popularise the celebration of Halloween.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge.

The first celebrations included ‘play parties,’ which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbours would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

Today, the holiday blends these ancient customs with Christian observances and has become a celebration of dressing up, trick-or-treating, and spooky fun.

History of trick-or-treating

Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, wearing costumes and eating treats.

Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s ‘trick-or-treat’ tradition.

Young women believed that on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mould Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighbourly get-togethers than about ghosts and pranks. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the 20th century.

Why do people wear masks on Halloween?

Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening season. Food supplies often ran low, and, for many people afraid of the dark, the short days brought constant worry.

On Halloween, when people believed ghosts returned to the earthly world, they feared encountering spirits if they went outside. To avoid being recognised, they wore masks after dark so ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.

To keep ghosts away from their homes, people also placed bowls of food outside to appease the spirits and prevent them from coming in.

Halloween parties

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a community-centred holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment.

By the 1950s, Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the 1950s baby boom, parties moved from town civic centres into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated.

Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighbourhood children with small treats.

Indian version of Halloween

The Indian version of Halloween is Bhoot Chaturdashi, celebrated in West Bengal the night before Diwali.

It is a day to honour ancestors, with a belief that the veil between the living and dead is thin, allowing spirits to visit. People light lamps to guide ancestors and cook a dish of 14 leafy greens, and it’s also known as Naraka Chaturdashi in other parts of India, a day to celebrate the victory of good over evil.

Tradition turns commercial

With Halloween, a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend more than $11 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second-largest commercial holiday after Christmas.

Halloween movies

Scary films released specially for Halloween are big box office hits.

Classic Halloween movies include the ‘Halloween’ franchise, based on the 1978 original film. Considered a classic horror film down to its spooky soundtrack, ‘Halloween’ inspired other iconic slasher films like ‘Scream,’ ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Friday the 13th.’

More family-friendly Halloween movies include ‘Hocus Pocus,’ ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.’

All Souls Day and Soul Cakes

The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called ‘soul cakes’ in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots.

Today, the celebration includes modern practices like dressing in costumes, trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, and telling scary stories.