Okay, it's time to gather around and get comfortable. I'm going to tell you about the beginning of Halloween. It happens this week. I'm sure many of you know about dressing in costumes and having kids walk up to your house, saying “Trick or Treat” and expecting candy to be placed in a container they’re carrying. This popular costume-wearing, candy-eating, party-going, scary-movie-watching holiday does have a beginning. It all started with those fun-loving people from history known as the Celts. If you don't know who they are just watch the movie “Braveheart.” I don't know if William Wallace had anything to do with Halloween, but it may be possible.
Thousands of years ago the Celts had Celtic festivals. One of their favorites was called Samhain. It was a day recognized for the ending of the summer, bringing in the harvest, and the start of extended darkness and preparing for the cold of winter. Now, we call this switching our clocks to daylight savings time. The Celts believed on this particular day, the boundary between the world of the living and dead vanish. This is when they believed ghosts of the dead came back to earth. The spirits would cause trouble and damage crops. The Celtic priests were called Druids. This is the time when they would make predictions about the future. I'm not sure how those Druids could see the future, I wonder if they saw how candy would one day become a real big deal during their festival of Samhain.
On this day, the Druids would build large bonfires that were considered sacred. People would come to these fires and make offerings to the Celtic deities by burning crops, sacrificing animals and more. During the bonfire, Celts wore costumes. What did the Celts costumes look like? Maybe it's when the naughty chambermaid and naughty William Wallace costumes were invented. Who knows? When the celebration was over the Celts would take some burnt wood from the sacred bonfire and use it to start a fire in their home. It was believed this would protect them during the approaching winter. Too bad s'mores had yet to be invented.
The settlers in New England knew of Halloween but did not put too much effort into recognizing it. I suppose the naughty pilgrim costumes had not been invented. Then more immigrants from around Europe began to arrive. Everybody wanted to celebrate Halloween and said “Pbbbbbth” to the New England settlers. Halloween started to be a day when people celebrated the harvest. They had games, parties and telling of ghost stories around a fire (thanks Druids) and some tried to make mischief. By the middle of the 1800s, an annual autumn festival was held all over the country.
During the 1850s, Americans combine traditions from the English and Irish (Celts). People started dressing up in costumes. Children would go house to house requesting food or money. The evolved into saying “trick or treat” at each house. It was also a time when young women believed they could use apple parings, a mirror, and yard to discover their future husband. I think this was the precursor to online dating.
By this time, most of the superstitious and religious connotations of this celebration was ignored or forgotten. Halloween evolved into a community event. Some towns had parties, parades and different types of entertainment. Vandalism began to be a big part of the holiday. As much as vandals enjoyed it, most people did not.
During this time town leaders felt the kids were out of control for this holiday. The holiday began to be focused on the youth and finding ways to stop vandalism. Halloween celebrations moved into school classrooms and into neighborhoods.
To address the out-of-control youth vandals, someone said, “Hey, let's revive the centuries-old practice of trick or treating. This way out stupid idiots kids will be so busy extorting free candy from people while wearing costumes, they won't have the time to vandalize things.”
“What if people don't want to give them candy?”
“Then, they're the ones who get vandalized.”
“Sounds like organized crime.”
“Kids got to learn about the real world some day. It'll be a good lesson.”
This gave birth to the fine American tradition of children hiding their identities and extorting candy from people. Businesses like this holiday since it's estimated that over $5.5 billion is spent each year on it. Halloween is the second most lucrative holiday for business. That is a lot of candy and naughty nurse costumes being sold every year. When I was growing up a man in my neighborhood gave out great candy. His goal was to upset as many kids as possible. He'd throw the candy on his law and tell kids to go get it. He'd tell one boy he'd give him two candy bars if he punched the kid next to him. Then a fight would happen, parents would yell, he'd tell them if they didn't like it to get off his property. He spent the entire night laughing at things he could make people do for candy. I'm not sure, but I think he was a Druid.
I absolutely loved this!! Hilarious! And because of that crazy "Outlander" that I watch, which by the way has the Celts, Druids, Sanheim, etc, I understood it perfectly.
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