I thought it would be interesting to look at our memories of Halloween past. This article will be part history lesson and part personal remembrances and I hope that it will rekindle all those warm Halloween memories from your childhood. Finally, I hope this article generates some discussions about your ‘Best Halloween Ever’.
First a little history. Halloween is observed annually on the night of Oct. 31 and there appears to be considerable debate about its origins. There is the belief that the customs attached to our celebration of Halloween derive from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which was appropriated by the early Christians to assist in the conversion of the Celtic people, while others argue that the celebration originated partly in Christianity, specifically All Saints’ Day, the feast day that honours all the saints (or hallows) of the church.
A feast was established in May 609 or 610 by Boniface IV when he consecrated the Roman Pantheon to the Virgin Mary and all martyrs. It was observed on May 13 until Pope Gregory III (731–41) dedicated a chapel of St. Peter’s Basilica to all the saints and changed the feast day to Nov. 1.
In the following century, Pope Gregory IV ( 827–44) established Nov. 1 as the day that the Feast of All Saints was observed in all Western churches (it is observed on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern churches).
According to the lexicon, the word Halloween has Christian origins and is derived from All Hallows Eve, the evening before All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day. Such a catch-all celebration became necessary as the calendar was becoming cluttered with the commemoration of numerous saints and martyrs.
I was taught as a child that its origins come from a Celtic celebration marking the division of the light and dark halves of the year, when the boundary between the living and the dead was believed to be at its thinnest.
It was observed annually in Britain and Ireland on Nov. 1, marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. The term Samhain means “summer’s end” and is the Gaelic word for November. Over the centuries, it also came to be recognized as the Celtic New Year, although research suggests this was not originally the case.
The bones of slaughtered animals were cast into communal fires to aid the dead on their journey. People extinguished their home fires and relit them from the bone fire (the origin of today’s bonfire) to celebrate the triumph of light over dark.
Meals were prepared for the living and the dead. Ritual offerings were left out to appease malevolent spirits that would otherwise bring bad luck to the home or the community.
The practice of begging for offerings from a household, originally known as souling or mumming, dates to the Middle Ages and is considered the precursor of the modern practice of trick-or-treating or shelling-out.
Beginning around the 15th century, the poor would offer to sing prayers for the souls of a household’s dead in exchange for soul cakes — a form of alms for the dead. As Halloween celebrations grew more secular, this practice was adopted by children.
Instead of saying prayers, they would sing songs, recite poems, or perform other entertaining tricks in exchange for nuts, fruit or coins. The practice of dressing children in disguise (guising) for souling became common during the 19th century.
Other common Halloween customs included a family dinner followed by parlour games, such as roasting nuts and bobbing for apples to divine one’s future, and the reading of Robert Burns’ 1786 poem called Hallowe’en, which describes many other games and customs. Halloween postcards and greeting cards were also extremely popular between about 1900 and 1940.
Halloween customs, such as wearing disguises to ward off ghosts and offering food to appease malevolent spirits, were brought to Canada in the mid-to-late 1800s by our Irish and Scottish immigrants.
One of the Halloween customs brought to Canada by Scottish and Irish immigrants was the jack-o’-lantern. There is some debate about the origins of this practice; some believe that carved turnips were used as lanterns on Samhain, while others claim that this was an adaptation of the old Christian custom of commemorating souls in purgatory by lighting candles in turnips.
The term jack-o’-lantern is derived from the myth of Stingy Jack, believed to have originated in the 17th century. According to Irish folklore, Stingy Jack was a drunkard and a cheat who was refused entry into both heaven (because he was a miser) and hell (because he played tricks on the devil).
Stingy Jack was condemned to roam the dimension between the living and the dead until Judgment Day with only an ember from hell to light his way. He kept the ember in a carved-out turnip as a lantern and thus was known as Jack of the lantern, or Jack-o’-Lantern.
Today we use a pumpkin, a term referring to the fruits of Cucurbita pepo that are picked after the rind has hardened but before the first frost. The pumpkin-carving contest occurs all over Canada on or around Halloween.
North America’s first recorded instance of dressing in disguise on Halloween was in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1898, while the first recorded use of the term trick or treat was in Lethbridge, Alberta, in 1927.
Halloween became increasingly popular with adults beginning in the 1980s and by 2014 was estimated to be a $1-billion industry in Canada, making it the second most commercially successful holiday behind Christmas.
Halloween has always provided an opportunity for pranks and general fun, although I don’t think that any real damage was ever done locally as I remember except perhaps to the tempers of some in the neighbourhood who had to hunt for their chairs, outhouses, planters, gates, pumpkins, etc., or had people knocking at the door and running away.
Trick or treating, along with the kind of mischief referred to above, originated in Britain in the late-18th century and came to be associated with the night of Oct. 31 becoming commonplace in Canada by the 1920s. Trick or treating waned during the Second World War, due primarily to the sugar ration, but was revived with a renewed vigour with the rise of the suburbs in the 1950s.
When I was a child, the tradition of Trick or Treat for UNICEF was begun to raise money for children in war-torn Europe. Implemented across Canada by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), the program involved giving school children an orange box worn around the neck with which they could collect money from households while trick-or-treating.
The campaign was introduced to Canada in 1955 and was discontinued in 2006, when UNICEF Canada shifted its fundraising efforts to its website. The program raised an average of $3 million per year in Canada, and more than $100 million in total during its existence, with all proceeds going to the purchase of vaccines, educational materials, and other forms of aid for children.
In the late 1800s, there was a move to transform Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighbourly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft. Halloween parties for both children and adults became the common method to celebrate the day, parties focused on games, the foods of the season and festive costumes.
Parents were encouraged to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations and Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones.
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centred holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some of the celebrations.
By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated.
As mentioned above, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was 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 neighborhood children with small treats.
I remember the scary Halloween movies as part of my Halloweens past, classic Halloween movies like the Halloween franchise featuring Michael. There were also more family-friendly Halloween movies which include Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
Halloween remains a wonderful memory from my childhood, the candies, the excitement of canvassing the neighbourhood with my friends even though I was personally confined to an area bordering Main Street, Eagle Street, Davis Drive and Lorne Avenue. My favorites were the miniature chocolate bars and rice crispy squares, although the taffy I would quickly trade to my friends. I felt safe and loved everywhere I went within my ‘little world’. Great memories.
Finally, I have listed a few ‘did you knows’ concerning Halloween for your amusement:
- One quarter of all the candy sold annually in North America is purchased for Halloween.
- More people, especially millennials, are buying costumes for their pets. Twenty per cent did so in 2018, up from 16 per cent in 2017.
- In the second half of the 19th century, Canada experienced a rapid increase in immigrants and these new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.
- According to a 2018 survey, 68 per cent of Canadians celebrate Halloween and 33 per cent of adults attend a Halloween party. Canadians spend more per capita ($70) on costumes, candy, and decorations than Americans.
Many of the Halloween traditions and beliefs of the past have been forgotten by today’s trick-or-treaters. An example of an obsolete ritual concerned young women attempting to identify their future husbands. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. I am sure many of you will remember the Sadie Hawkins Dances, a part of this practice.
The holiday has also become a flashpoint for controversy, with costumes drawing wide public criticism for sexualizing young girls and depicting racial and ethnic stereotypes.
Sources: Halloween in Canada, article by Andrew McIntosh; Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night; Lisa Morton, Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween; David J. Skal, Death Makes a Holiday: Cultural History of Halloween; James Napier, Yule, Beltane and Halloween Festivals (Folklore History Series)
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Newmarket resident Richard MacLeod — the History Hound — has been a local historian for more than 40 years. He writes a weekly feature about our town’s history in partnership with Newmarket Today, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews
