Halloween, Hallowe’en, or All Hallows Eve refers to the evening before “All Hallows Day” or “All Saints Day,” the Catholic Feast of All Saints, which falls on November 1; hence, Halloween always falls on October 31. “All Souls Day” is November 2, on which day it is traditional to pray for the souls of the dead. All Saints Day has been enshrined in Catholic doctrine since the eighth century and All Souls since around the year 1000 CE, so there is a long tradition in Christian faith and practice of associating this time of year with rites and rituals concerning the dead. Generally it is believed that this enshrinement of Halloween within the Christian canon was a reaction to the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the death of the old year and the birth of the new, and at which point the boundaries between the material world and the spirit world were thought to be particularly permeable. In any case, whether it is a product of pagan practice, Christian faith, or some combination of the two, Halloween has long been considered a liminal time: Halloween serves as a boundary marker on the frontier between the land of the living and that of the dead.
Halloween as it is celebrated in the United States today is the product of a long period of evolution and the melding of a number of traditions and influences. The Catholic and Celtic influences of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century are often cited as the genesis of what we now think of as Halloween. Certainly these people would have brought with them from their homeland the tradition of receiving visitors in the home on All Hallows Eve. On the eve of All Saints and All Souls Day it would have been traditional for each family to offer such guests “soul cakes,” treats given with the expectation that the recipient would pray for the souls of the departed members of the host’s family. These immigrants would also have brought with them the tradition of carving jack-o’-lanterns, which were spectral faces carved in vegetables so that the light of an interior candle may shine through the cut-out eyes, nose, and mouth. While in Ireland such candleholders were carved from large turnips or potatoes, the New World offered native pumpkins, which were particularly well suited for the task. Some sources indicate that these lights were meant to welcome visitors and spirits into the home, rather like Christmas Eve luminaria. The tradition of carving scary faces into jack-o’-lanterns, however, suggests an effort to portray a guardian spirit that would frighten away dangerous and unwelcome visitors from the Otherworld. In the late nineteenth century, popular magazines helped the middle-class descendants of poor Irish immigrants reimagine Halloween in a more Victorian manner, and by the early twentieth century a number of widespread traditions—concerning cider and doughnuts or popcorn balls and apples, for example—had been popularly adopted.
Moreover, preexisting colonial harvest festivals and early American coupling games traditional in the autumn, such as Snap Apple Nights and Nut Crack Nights, became conflated into the holiday mix that was to become the American Halloween as we now know it. Known as “play parties,” by the mid-nineteenth century these harvesttide celebrations had evolved a number of courting activities that drew upon traditions from the Old World. Bobbing for apples, for example, was a British amusement that gave unmarried individuals the opportunity to try to take a bite out of an apple with their hands held behind them. Although it was often played with apples “bobbing” in a tub of water—as most Americans today would recognize the game—sometimes the apple would be suspended from a string. The first young hopeful to manage to take a bite of the apple, according to tradition, would be the first to marry. Such games played with the surplus apples of the season derive from harvest festivals of yore, and the association between winning the game and finding a mate may suggest ancient folk beliefs and fertility rites. Nut Crack Nights have a similar folkloric resonance. In these events, a number of young couples would sit near the hearth with representative pairs of nuts placed by the fire. Those lovers whose walnuts roasted quietly could expect a peaceful courtship and a long and abiding marriage, while those couples whose nuts cracked and popped might expect a commensurately tempestuous life together.
Close-up of a Halloween pumpkin (jack-o’-lantern), a spark of light illuminating its smile and carved face. The tradition of carving large turnips or potatoes into jack-o’-lanterns came to the United States with Irish immigrants, who found the native pumpkin perfect for such purposes. The carved specter of the jack-o’-lantern may have represented a spiritual guardian which warded off evil on All Hallows Eve. (Cacrov/Dreamstime.com)
Candy corn and candy pumpkins first appeared in the late nineteenth century in conjunction with traditional harvest festivals, and candy companies in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati take credit for popularizing candy corn. In particular, the Goelitz Confectionery Company—renamed the Jelly Belly Candy Company in 2001 in recognition of its signature product since the Reagan presidency—claims to have specialized in candy corn since at least 1898. The Brach’s Company of Chicago, meanwhile, claims to have originated the “holy trinity” of candy corn; since their inception in the 1920s the tripartite gold, orange, and white triangular confections have become emblematic of trick-or-treating for generations of American children. Brach’s claims to be the leading manufacturer of candy corn, churning out tens of millions of pieces per day. All told, American confectioners produce billions of candy corn kernels per year, the bulk of which are sold and consumed around Halloween, despite the fact that Brach’s claims that it is a treat that “you can enjoy all year long.”
For the first half of the twentieth century, the classic American children’s Halloween activity was the playing of pranks, although family parties for kids were also common. Sugar was rationed during World War II, and sweets did not arise as the centerpiece of a neighborhood-centered holiday until the 1950s. As the American suburban landscape expanded and evolved after the war, however, Halloween adapted to suit this new environment: mass-produced cookie-cutters and easy-to-use baking mixes made holiday-themed cookies and cupcakes the favored suburban Halloween treats for many middle-class homemakers, and the focus of the holiday shifted to young children in a conscious effort to discourage teenage vandals from engaging in Halloween pranks.
Trick-or-treating reemerged during this period and in postwar suburbia took on much of the shape we recognize today. It is still a rite of passage for American children to wear costumes and go door-to-door in their communities, begging for candy with the catchphrase “Trick or treat,” although the tricks have long been frowned upon and deemphasized. In recent decades, urban legends concerning fears regarding the poisoning of treats, the implantation of needles in baked goods or razor blades in apples, and the like, has led to stricter monitoring of trick-or-treating by parents, and many children are forbidden to consume any item not prepared and individually packaged, which must have added to the financial windfall of candy-makers. Isolated instances of treat tampering no doubt have occurred, but whether these were the reason for the urban legends or an attempt to emulate them is not entirely clear. In addition, due to growing fears of kidnapping and sexual abuse, parents now routinely accompany their children on their nocturnal peregrinations in search of sweets, although this would have been unusual even as recently as a generation ago. Trick-or-treating has now established footholds in other countries, most notably in the English-speaking world. Moreover, raising money for UNICEF while trick-or-treating began in 1950 in Philadelphia and has since spread to a number of countries around the world, involving millions of children each year.
Halloween-themed parties for adults are now commonplace as well, and prizes, costumes, food, and drink associated with such festivities are very often macabre in appearance. A cake shaped like a tombstone, for example, would be likely to garner compliments from appreciative guests, and some such American Halloween foods and rituals resonate on some levels with Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations. Some Halloween hosts are thought to push the envelope of good taste in this regard, even concocting purposefully disgusting confections of candy and cake ingredients, which might take the form of worm-ridden cadaver parts, to cite one possibility. Witches, pumpkins, and skulls are perennially favorite icons of costumes and foods associated with Halloween. Adult Halloween parties are also often venues for flirtation, especially among young adults, and “sexy witch” or “hottie zombie” costumes would not be out of place at many such gatherings.
Jack-o’-Lantern
Although the tradition of the jack-o’-lantern originated in the British Isles, it has become so much an icon of the American imagination that it even has become associated with features in the landscape, perhaps most notably with the phenomenon also known as the “will-o’-the-wisp” or swamp gas; that is, the term jack-o’-lantern—commonly associated with Halloween and with the concept of a permeable barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead—quite naturally came to be applied to the ghostly, otherworldly lights visible at night in some marshy areas. Ignis fatuus, “foolish fire,” is thought to be caused by methane escaping from vegetative matter decomposing beneath the surface of the water, although the cause of ignition is not completely clear, which adds to the mystique of the phenomenon. The folklore that developed around what are also sometimes called “ghost lights” includes the notion that these are caused by embers of hellfire affixed to spirits that have escaped from the nether regions.
C. Fee
The night before Halloween has taken on a life of its own and is known by such names as “Devil’s Night,” “Mischief Night,” or “Damage Night” in different regions. Perhaps originally derived from puckish peccadillos performed by juveniles in Ireland and attributed to the “Little People,” American Devil’s Night activities seem to have escalated notably during the 1980s. Traditionally associated with relatively harmless teen pranks such as “TP-ing” houses by garlanding them with toilet paper, over time the activities became more criminal and included petty vandalism and even arson. This may be especially true of the city of Detroit, Michigan, which has been associated since the 1980s with mass fires and criminal destruction of property rising to the level of riots.
Haunted houses are popular attractions throughout the United States in the fall, and competition is fierce to provide the scariest possible experience for visitors. Many Americans are, in fact, willing to pay good money for the privilege of being scared senseless. Indeed, haunted houses are often fundraisers and are actually a staple feature at many fairs and carnivals. Many families decorate their own homes along these lines to elicit delighted screams of terror from visiting trick-or-treaters. There may even be unofficial neighborhood competitions in this regard, as there often is with Christmas lights and yard decorations. The desire to have the scariest house on the block is an ambition lampooned in a 2012 episode of the TV show Modern Family. The “Haunted Mansion” of the Disney franchise is probably the most well-known and high-end example of the haunted house genre, and it even spawned a much-lamented Eddie Murphy film in 2003. Few autumn carnivals or fairs would be complete without such an attraction, however, and it might be difficult to find an American community of any size that is not within a reasonable drive of a haunted house. In rural areas corn mazes are popular, and in addition to their obvious function as festive harvest labyrinths, these can also serve as popular nighttime “haunted” activities.
The iconic Peanuts Halloween animated short feature It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which was first broadcast on television in 1966, plays with the establishment and promulgation of Halloween traditions, which were heavily influenced and often developed by both the popular press and the merchandising efforts of candy companies. In this program a number of Halloween traditions established for some decades were enshrined forever in the American cartoon canon. Trick-or-treating is explained and examined in depth, especially in scenes involving Charlie Brown’s little sister, Sally. Charlie Brown’s sad-sack character garners only a bag full of rocks, a play on the concept of Christmas-stocking coal that speaks to childhood anxieties and insecurities. Violet’s Halloween party, on the other hand, explicitly references such traditions as bobbing for apples, complete with Lucy Van Pelt’s vocal approbation of how to celebrate Halloween appropriately.
Meanwhile in the main plot line Linus Van Pelt entices Sally Brown to forego the usual trick-or-treating in favor of awaiting the imaginary “Great Pumpkin” in the “most sincere” pumpkin patch. According to Linus’s belief, the Great Pumpkin rises each year from just such a patch to travel around the world distributing toys to all the good little boys and girls. The conflation of the secular American Santa Claus Christmas myth with the pumpkin jack-o’-lanterns of Halloween is a particularly deft reference to the establishment and development of such secular American folklore around what were originally religious holidays. Furthermore, Charles Schulz’s explicit mention of “sincerity” seems a sly reference to the market forces that shaped Halloween, and which—not incidentally—provided the financial support for the very program in question. Tellingly, in this regard, in the original televised version Linus continued to shout his faith in the Great Pumpkin over the closing ads for snack cakes and soda.
C. Fee
See also Haunted Houses; Scary Stories; Zombie Legends
Further Reading
Bannatyne, Lesley Pratt, ed. 2004. A Halloween Reader: Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloween Past. Gretna, LA: Pelican.
Markale, Jean. 2001. The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.
Morton, Lisa. 2013. Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. London: Reaktion Books.
Santino, Jack. 1982. “Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows.” The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress website.. http://www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html. Accessed September 3, 2015.
“Short Scary Stories and Local Legends.” Halloween Web. http://www.halloween-website.com/scary_stories.htm. Accessed September 3, 2015.