Happy Halloween

It’s sometimes difficult to give accurate information about many western customs.  Even though I understand, follow and participate in many North American customs and traditions, I don’t always know the origins of the traditions, or how certain customs evolved over time. 

As an ESL teacher, especially teaching overseas, I was repeatedly asked about certain holidays and traditions.  In an effort to be able to answer my students’ questions, I started researching different holiday customs.  I found that there was not an easy, short explanation to be offered for most of our traditions.  Many explanations involve explaining the politics, religions, cultures and histories of our ancestors resulting in long lengthy discussions that weren’t always easy for students to understand.

So over the years I’ve come up with abridged versions of how traditions started.  This is the explanation I offer to students when they ask why we dress up for Halloween, and why we give out candy to the children who come to our doors yelling “Trick or Treat.”

It was believed by pagan cultures that spirits of the dead came to the earth on the night of October 31.  These spirits wanted to steal the souls of young children.  In an effort to keep their children safe from the spirits, parents dressed the children up in ghoulish outfits.  When the spirits arrived to take the children, they couldn’t recognize them and could only find ghosts and goblins.  They had to leave for the spirit world without the souls of the children. 

 

Food was left on the doorstep of homes for the spirits to eat on their visits to earth.  It was believed that if a home did not put food on their doorstep, that the evil spirits would play a trick on the residents of that house.

 

Over time the people stopped believing in evil spirits, but they continued to dress up their children on October 31st.  The custom of leaving food on the doorstep evolved into handing out treats to children who came to the doorstep dressed as spirits yelling “Trick or Treat.”