13 Halloween Facts

                  

1. Halloween beliefs and customs were brought to North America with the earliest Irish immigrants, then by the great waves of Irish immigrants fleeing the famines of the first half of the nineteenth century. Known in the North American continent since colonial days, by the middle of the twentieth century Halloween had become largely a children's holiday.
2. Halloween, also known as All Hallows' Eve, can be traced back about 2,000 years to a pre-Christian Celtic festival held around Nov. 1 called Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"), which means "summer's end" in Gaelic, according to the Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries. 
3. Samhain is not fully understood, but it was an annual communal meeting at the end of the harvest year, a time to gather resources for the winter months and bring animals back from the pastures.
4. In Great Britain, Jack-O-Lanterns are traditionally made from turnips. The Halloween custom came to American through Irish immigrants, and since turnips weren’t cheap state-side, Americans used pumpkins. Today, pumpkins are used worldwide, to the disappointment of turnip farmers everywhere.                                                      
5. The Jack-O-Lantern tradition comes from another Celtic tale. Jack tricked the Devil into paying for his drink, so the Devil gave Jack a hellish ember. But crafty Jack placed the ember safely into a turnip, which he carved and carried with him so as to scare away any future hellish encounters.
6. Trick-or-treating didn't start in the United States until World War II, but American kids were known to go out on Thanksgiving and ask for food — a practice known as Thanksgiving begging. The practice may also be related to the medieval custom of "souling" in Britain and Ireland, when poor people would knock on doors on Hallowmas (Nov. 1), asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead.
7. These days, the "trick" part of the phrase "trick or treat" is mostly an empty threat, but pranks have long been a part of the holiday. By the 1920s and '30s, the celebrations more closely resembled an unruly block party, and the acts of vandalism got more serious. Some people believe that because pranking was starting to get dangerous and out of hand, parents and town leaders began to encourage dressing up and trick-or-treating as a safe alternative to doing pranks
8. The night of Oct. 30, which goes by a variety of names including Devil's Night in Detroit and Miggy Night in parts of England, sees neighborhood youngsters pull pranks just as diverse as the customs monikers, ranging from the innocent to the downright dangerous.
9. Apples are associated with Halloween, both as a treat and in the game of bobbing for apples, a game that since the colonial era in America was used for fortune-telling. Legend has it that the first person to pluck an apple from the water-filled bucket without using his or her hands would be the first to marry. Apples were also part of another form of marriage prophecy. According to legend, on Halloween (sometimes at the stroke of midnight), young women would peel an apple into one continuous strip and throw it over her shoulder. The apple skin would supposedly land in the shape of the first letter of her future husband's name.
10. Another Halloween ritual involved looking in a mirror at midnight by candlelight, for a future husband's face was said to appear. (A scary variation of this later became the "Bloody Mary" ritual familiar to many schoolgirls.) Like many such childhood games, it was likely done in fun, though at least some people took it seriously. 
11.  Black cats do not need to have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil — simply crossing their path is considered bad luck any time of year.
12. A 1951 Peanuts comic strip can be credited with the popular spread of trick or treating as we know it nationwide. So dress up as Snoopy if you want to be historically accurate.   
13. Candy-makers are pretty happy about that. Halloween is a $6 billion industry. But with or without candy, everyone loves a Halloween party. Traditionally, a Halloween Cake was baked with a thimble inside. Whoever got the thimble in their slice was to be unfortunate in love for the next year.