I grew up in a small farming community in southern Illinois. In New Iberia, we have parades for Christmas and Mardi Gras. In Centralia, Illinois, the parade is for Halloween. Actually, Halloween in southern Illinois was a week-long celebration, complete with elaborate costume contests, children’s parades and culminating in the awe-inspiring Halloween parade.

I love Halloween. Apparently, I’m not the only one; as a country, we spend more $5 billion a year celebrating it. But where did the holiday come from? And how did traditions like asking strangers for food and dressing up as ghosts develop?

Halloween has its roots in Samhain, an ancient harvest festival held at the end of the Celtic year. The festival marked the end of summer and the beginning of the dark wintertime. It was believed the spirits of the dead returned on this eve to damage crops and play tricks on the living. It also was believed that the Celtic priests, or Druids, were able to make predictions about the future, which they did during large bonfire celebrations where they wore animal skins and sacrificed crops and animals to the spirits.

By 800 A.D., Christianity spread to the Celtic Territories and brought with it another holiday, “All Saints Day.” Pope Boniface IV, the designator of All Saints Day, likely was trying to replace Samhain with a similar but holier holiday meant to honor saints and martyrs. Later on, All Saints Day was renamed “All Hallows” and thus the day of Samhain (Oct. 31) began to be called “All Hallows Eve,” and eventually shortened to “Hallowe’en.”

All of the holidays that were melded together to create our modern version of Halloween involved dressing up in one way or another. The celebrants of Samhain wore animal skins at their bonfire celebrations and those that observed “All Saints Day” often dressed as saints or angels. Later on, men in Scotland would impersonate the dead on the day, explaining the ghoulish tradition we still observe.

What used to be just a singular holiday with minimal things to purchase has turned into an entire “Halloween Season.” Between decorative lights and lawn ornaments, elaborate costumes and loads of candy, the average American spends a pretty penny on this fall holiday. However popular Halloween has become, the downturns in the economy does effect spending on this spooky night. Spending is down, according the National Retail Federation. Shoppers will spend an average of $86.31 on the holiday compared to $98.54 in 2015. Some ways people are cutting down include making homemade costumes, using last year’s decorations and buying less expensive candies. For the children’s sake, let’s hope everyone doesn’t resort to giving out apples and pennies. Didn’t you just hate that as a kid?

Yes, no matter how much we eat for Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween has cornered the market on candy. As a country, we consume 20 million pounds of candy corn a year. Handing out Halloween treats is the perfect excuse to eat some too, as 4-in-10 (41 percent) adults admit that they sneak sweets from their own candy bowl. And if you’re a kid, hang on to your basket, because home is where the candy thief is as 90 percent of parents admit to sneaking goodies from their kids’ Halloween trick-or-treat bags. But whether you’re stealing some, handing out some or having yours stolen, chances are you’ll get your hands (or miss getting your hands) on a Snickers bar, it has been the No. 1 Halloween candy for years. 

Did you know the first jack-o-lanterns weren’t made out of pumpkins? They were originally hollowed-out turnips. The Irish initiated the tradition by carving faces of the dead onto turnips and putting candles inside to make them glow. These days your jack-o-lantern is mostly made out of a pumpkin, which most likely came from Illinois — a state that grew 541 million pounds of pumpkins last year — which may explain my childhood!

 

CHRISTINA PIERCE is publisher of The Daily Iberian