On Friday night people will dress up in Halloween costumes to wander the streets, and young children will rap on the doors of strangers to spew out the familiar chant of "trick or treat."
But what is Halloween? Where did it originate, and how did it become what it is today?
Halloween was derived from an ancient Celtic festival referred to as Samhain (sow-in.) (The Celts inhabited the British Isles 2000 years ago).
Oct. 31 was originally the Eve of the Celtic New Year. It celebrated the end of the harvest and beginning of winter, which was associated with death. The ghosts of the dead were believed to return to the earth on this night.
The Celts believed the Celtic priests were able to make predictions about the future in the presence of the spirits. Sacred bonfires were built to appease the Celtic deities and fortunes were told while wearing "costumes" of animal heads and hides.
Christianity spread into the Celtic land by the 800s, causing the Celtic festival to merge with All Saint's Day; also called All-Hallows. It is believed that Pope Boniface IV was trying to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a church holiday. The night before, the night of Samhain, was All-Hallows Eve, which was eventually called Halloween.
As different European groups meshed together in America, the American Halloween began to emerge. Annual autumn festivities were common in early America but did not evolve into Halloween until the second half of the 19th century. It was during this time that millions of Irish fled Ireland's potato famine of 1846 to come to America. The Irish tradition of dressing up and going door to door asking for money became an American practice.
Sometime after the turn of the century, Halloween was celebrated with parties focusing on games, food, and costumes. Halloween became a community-centered holiday by the 1920's, incorporating parades and entertainment. Yet, vandalism made its way into the holiday as well. Soon after, the holiday began to be directed primarily at the young. Trick or treat worked its way back into the festivities and parties began in the class-rooms.
Along with the "trick-or-treat" tradition in old Ireland, were rituals focused on the future. Tradition said that a young woman would dream of her future husband if she ate a concoction of sugar, nuts, and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night. And as for the Jack-O-Lantern...
According to Irish legend, Stingy Jack was a man who invited the devil for a drink. He tricked the devil into turning himself into a coin which he placed into his pocket next to a cross. He freed him after he made him promise not to bother him for a year. The next year, Jack tricked the devil up a tree and drew a cross at the bottom. The devil could not come down until he promised not to bother Jack for ten years. When Jack died, he wasn't allowed into Heaven and the Devil couldn't allow him into hell, so he sent him off into the night with burning coal. Jack carved out a turnip and placed the coal inside.
Today, we use the pumpkin, a fruit which is native to America.
If you care to commune with the ghosts of the dead then you've come to the right place. Rumor has it that Nacogdoches is a hub of paranormal activity. The Old Opera House @ 329 E. Main harbors a few ghosts of the past. Even SFA has its very own ghost. His name is Chester, and he has a tendency to linger around the theater department.
At the Convention and Visitors Bureau in downtown Nacogdoches, you can find a book called "Ghosts of the Nacogdoches Historical Trail" which lists the legends of Nacogdoches and their historical haunts.
Halloween is here. So, don your costumes, seek out haunted places, toss an apple peel over your shoulder for a future husband's initials, find a scary pumpkin to frighten away spirits (waste not, want not), and head out into your neighborhood for a little trick or treating.
Oh, and play it safe.
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