History
The History of Halloween
Halloween is the result of roughly two thousand years of layering: a Celtic seasonal festival, a Christian feast day, Irish folk custom, American mass culture and a European return journey.
Samhain: the Celtic starting point
The oldest identifiable ancestor of Halloween is Samhain, a festival observed in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man that marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark half of the year. Cattle were brought down from summer pasture, the year's stores were assessed, and communities gathered.
Medieval Irish literature associates Samhain with assemblies, feasting and stories in which the boundaries of the ordinary world become unreliable. How much of that reflects genuine pre-Christian belief and how much is later literary elaboration is still debated by historians. What is reasonably clear is that a significant seasonal festival existed at this point in the calendar.
The Christian calendar takes shape
In 609 the Pantheon in Rome was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the martyrs, and a feast of all saints was observed in May. In the eighth century Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel in St Peter's to all saints, and during the ninth century 1 November became the general date for All Saints' Day in the Western church.
All Souls' Day on 2 November followed in the tenth century, promoted from the abbey of Cluny. From that point the calendar contained a three-day sequence: the eve, the saints, the souls. Halloween is the first day of that sequence and takes its name from it.
Folk custom in Ireland and Scotland
By the late medieval and early modern period, the eve of All Saints had accumulated a rich set of folk practices in Ireland and Scotland. "Souling" involved going from house to house to receive soul cakes in return for prayers for the dead. "Guising" meant going out in disguise and performing a song, poem or trick in exchange for food.
Lanterns were carved from turnips and mangelwurzels, not pumpkins, which did not exist in Europe before contact with the Americas. Divination games — apple bobbing, nut roasting, mirror rituals — were a central part of the evening, particularly for young people. These practices are the direct ancestors of modern trick-or-treating and Halloween party games.
Emigration to North America
Large-scale Irish and Scottish emigration in the nineteenth century, intensified by the Great Famine, carried these customs to North America. There they encountered pumpkins, a native crop that is far easier to carve and far larger than a turnip, and the modern jack o'lantern was born.
Through the early twentieth century Halloween in the United States shifted from a rowdy, occasionally destructive night into a community-organised, child-focused event. Trick-or-treating in its recognisable form spread widely in the 1930s and 1940s and became near-universal after the Second World War.
Commercialisation and the film industry
From the 1970s onwards, mass-produced costumes, decorations and confectionery turned Halloween into one of the largest retail events in the American calendar. Cinema reinforced the imagery: John Carpenter's film of 1978 permanently attached a horror register to the date, and subsequent decades produced an entire visual vocabulary of Halloween.
This is the version of Halloween that most of Europe eventually received: highly visual, strongly commercial and considerably darker in tone than the folk customs it descended from.
The return to Europe
Halloween arrived in continental Europe as a mass phenomenon in the 1990s, carried by film, television, retail and, in Austria and Germany, by an enthusiastic events industry. Adoption was rapid in cities and slower in rural areas, where existing autumn customs were already established.
Austria had its own related traditions long before this. Turnip lanterns were carved in several regions, and the days around All Saints' were marked by baking, visiting and giving. The Allerheiligenstriezel, a braided sweet bread given by godparents to their godchildren, remains widespread and predates Halloween in Austria by centuries.
Where the festival stands now
Halloween today is neither purely imported nor purely native. It is a hybrid: American in its packaging, Irish in its mechanics, Celtic and Christian in its calendar position, and increasingly local in the way individual families and communities choose to celebrate it.
The most durable form in Austria appears to be a moderate one. Decorated houses, carved pumpkins, children going from door to door in the neighbourhood, a family meal, and then a quiet public holiday the following day. That is not a break with tradition; it is roughly what the eve of All Saints looked like for several hundred years.
Frequently asked questions
How old is Halloween?
Its oldest identifiable ancestor, the Celtic festival of Samhain, is roughly two thousand years old. The name and the calendar position date from the establishment of All Saints' Day on 1 November in the ninth century.
Did Halloween come from America?
The modern form did. The underlying customs came from Ireland and Scotland, travelled to North America with emigrants in the nineteenth century, and returned to Europe as a commercialised festival in the 1990s.
Why pumpkins and not turnips?
The original lanterns were carved from turnips in Ireland and Scotland. Irish emigrants in North America found pumpkins larger, softer and easier to carve, and the pumpkin became the standard.
What is Samhain?
Samhain was a Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and the start of the dark half of the year, celebrated around the beginning of November.
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