Halloween

Halloween originates from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, later transformed by immigrants in America into a secular holiday centered on community and trick-or-treating. The holiday marks the end of harvest and the beginning of winter, with beliefs that the boundary between the living and dead blurred, leading to customs like lighting bonfires and wearing costumes.

Ancient Celtic Roots: Samhain

Samhain Festival: Over 2,000 years ago, the Celts in Ireland, Scotland, and Northern France celebrated Samhain, a festival marking the end of harvest and the start of winter, the new year for the Celts.

Spirits and Bonfires: During Samhain, the boundary between the living and the dead was believed to become blurred, allowing spirits to roam the earth. Celts lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off or guide spirits.

Christian Influence

Christianization: The Roman Empire, after conquering Celtic lands, blended Samhain with their own festivals of Feralia (honoring the dead) and Pomona (goddess of fruit), influencing traditions like apple bobbing.

All Saints' Day: By the 8th century, the Catholic Church established November 1st as All Saints' Day (All Hallows' Day) and November 2nd as All Souls' Day to honor the dead, with the evening of October 31st becoming All Hallows' Eve.

Soul Cakes and Souling: A tradition of "souling" emerged where people would go door-to-door asking for soul cakes in exchange for prayers for the deceased, a potential precursor to trick-or-treating.

in America

Immigrant Traditions: Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their Halloween customs to America in the 19th century, blending them with other harvest and community traditions.

Trick-or-Treating: The tradition of "trick-or-treating" developed as part of these evolving practices.

Modern Transformation: By the 20th century, Halloween became a more secular, community-focused holiday with events for children and widespread adoption of costumes and pumpkin carving.

By A.D. 43, the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

All Saints' Day

On May 13, 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In the year 1000, the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallo‘s eve, and, eventually, Halloween.

How Did Halloween Start in America?

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was more commonly recognized in Maryland and the southern colonies.

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. Neighbors 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.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

of Trick-or-Treating

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 mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. 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.

Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the 20th century.

Black Cats and Ghosts on Halloween

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into black cats.

We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred (it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe). And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

Among superstitions, one of the oldest and most enduring is that crossing paths with a black cat will bring on bad luck. The dark-colored felines have also been folded into modern Halloween symbols, giving them the (unearned) reputation of being spooky.

But how and where did the association between black cats and bad luck begin? Here’s what is known about the connection between Halloween and black cats, including the lasting impact of this superstition that remains today.

Origins of Black Cat Superstitions

The connections between humans and cats can be traced back to some of the world’s earliest civilizations, most notably, ancient Egypt, where cats were considered divine symbols. Cats also made an appearance in Greek mythology, specifically Hecate, goddess of magic, sorcery, the moon and witchcraft, was described as having a cat as both a pet and a familiar (a supernatural creature that assists a witch, according to European folklore).

Written records link black cats to the occult as far back as the 13th century when an official church document called “Vox in Rama” was issued by Pope Gregory IX on June 13, 1233. “In it, black cats were declared an incarnation of Satan,” says Layla Morgan Wilde, author of Black Cats Tell: True Tales And Inspiring Images. “The decree marked the beginning of the inquisition and church-sanctioned heretic and/or witch hunts. Initially it was designed to squash the growing cult of Luciferians in Germany, but quickly spread across Europe.”

Cats and Witches Seen as Threats to Early Christian Church

In addition to their early association with Satan, cats also became inextricably linked to witches in medieval Europe. According to Cerridwen Fallingstar, Wiccan priestess and author of Broth from the Cauldron: A Wisdom Journey through Everyday Magic, witches were the pre-Christian pagan practitioners of Europe.

Although the early Christian church in Europe coexisted with witches, as the church gained power, she says that they saw witches as their direct competition in gaining the hearts and minds of the people. That’s when the church began hunting, persecuting, torturing and killing witches in vast numbers, she explains.

“Witches honored the natural world, having deep respect for plants and animals,” says Fallingstar. “Affection between human and animal therefore began to be seen as 'diabolical', or devilish, and the old lady with her cats became seen as suspect.”

But it wasn’t only the connection they fabricated between witches, cats, and the devil that the early Christians feared: they also saw them both as threats. “Cats, like the women accused of witchcraft, tend to exhibit a healthy disrespect of authority,” she notes. “They don't fawn, like dogs, upon even the unworthy. In the church, neither independent women, nor independent animals, were to be tolerated.”

At some point, the pairing of witches with cats narrowed to black cats, although Fallingstar says that it’s not entirely clear why that happened. “The relationship between witches and black cats, in particular, is probably imaginary, but it is possible that black cats make better mousers, since they cannot be seen at night and therefore have a hunting advantage,” she explains. “Witches do tend towards the practical.”

Eventually, the fear surrounding black cats and their association with witchcraft made its way across the Atlantic, courtesy of Puritan colonists, says Daniel Compora, associate professor of English language and literature at The University of Toledo. “The idea that witches could turn into their familiar likely evolved from those accused of witchcraft having cats as pets,” he explains.

Cats Blamed for Spreading the Plague

During the Middle Ages, it wasn’t uncommon for cats to be killed, given their association with evil, Compora says. Some people even went as far as blaming cats for spreading the Bubonic plague and used that as another reason to get rid of them. However, their ill-conceived plan backfired.

“In a particularly bizarre piece of irony, the killing of the cats helped fuel the spread of the plague,” Compora explains. “With the reduced number of cats to control the rodent population, the disease spread rapidly.”

Origins of Black Cat Crossing Your Path Superstition

Given the belief in medieval Europe that the devil and witches were capable of taking the form of black cats, it makes sense that the superstition surrounding crossing their paths developed, says Phoebe Millerwhite, a folklorist and artist. “Therefore, a black cat crossing your path might very well be on a mission from a witch,” she notes. “Just as easily, it could be the devil in disguise—and no one wants to cross paths with the devil. This explains why a black cat crossing your path is considered a bad omen.”

This notion continued into the Renaissance, says Fallingstar, when a black cat crossing your path might have indicated that a witch had sent her familiar to do you harm. “Many fearful peasants of the day might have hurried to the nearest church and paid for a priest to bless them and rid them of any curse that might have been laid by the cat,” she says. “As this was a source of income for the church, such fears would have likely been encouraged.”

But the idea that black cats are bad luck isn’t universal, according to Compora. In fact, some cultures believe that black cats bring good luck.

“Their resemblance to the cat-goddess Bastet led them to be honored in ancient Egypt,” he explains. “In other countries, such as Scotland and Japan, they have been known to represent prosperity. Apparently, whether a black cat is viewed as a benevolent creature or an evil supernatural force is entirely based on whichever lore one is likely to embrace.”

‘Anyway, you now have more than you need to know about the origins of Halloween. It’s a fun, unusual celebration and holiday in America, and is probably the most favorite of my wife, Jme. She dresses up, she hands out candy to kids at the door. She watches Halloween movies for at least a week before the actual day, October 31. Actually, I think she is a witch!