I am a Halloween scholar with a PhD. in witchology, and I want to share my knowledge with you. These 12 Halloween facts and “didya knows?” cover everything you ever wanted to know about the holiday: pumpkins, black cats, and novelty music. Isn’t that what Halloween is all about?
We’re not entirely sure where Halloween traditions came from
It’s fitting that the origin of Halloween is somewhat mysterious. Many sources confidently state that the holiday originated with the Samhain celebrations of the Celts and Druids in Ireland, England, and Northern France around 2,000 years ago. Later, the Church christianized the feasts under the name “All Hallow’s Day” and “All Hallow’s Eve.” A nice story, but is it true?
Some modern historians maintain that ties between Celtic celebrations and early Christian practices are tenuous, and medieval Christian festivals provide the real blueprint for the holiday. It’s a mess. You can read more about it in my Real History of Halloween if you’d like.
Trick-or-treating was born in Canada
Canada, America’s hat, is the birthplace of trick-or-treating. Calling on your neighbors on holidays and demanding something has earlier roots in the European tradition of “wassailing,” but that was a Christmas thing. The first appearance of trick-or-treating in connection with Halloween in print comes from a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario in 1911. From there, it spread over the continent—slowly. The first mention of it in a national publication in the United States doesn’t happen until the late 1930s, and trick-or-treating didn’t really take off until the early ’50s, when it appeared in a Peanuts comic strip and a Disney cartoon.
Failed early attempts at Halloween greetings
Knocking on a door on Halloween and saying “trick or treat” is ubiquitous, but it wasn’t always so. In the early days of candy-begging in Canada, kids tried a variety of phrases to get candy. Here are some of the also-rans, ordered from worst to best:
- “Halloween apples!” Terrible. who wants an apple on Halloween?
- “Charity, please!” Better. I like the appeal to pathos.
- “Shell out!” Fantastic. Right to the point. Some kids added “Shell out, shell out, or we’ll break your windows out,” which is even better.
Elizabeth Krebs: The cranky grandmother of Halloween
Elizabeth Krebs, of Hiawatha, Kansas, is an unsung hero of Halloween, but she wasn’t fond of children. The founder of the Hiawatha Garden Club, Krebs loved her flowers most of all, but in Kansas in the early 1900s, the local youths celebrated “mischief night,” the night before Halloween, by running rampant through town, inevitably destroying Krebs’ carefully planted flower beds.
Embodying the can-do spirit of the American midwest, Krebs fought the vandals with love by organizing the first Halloween parade in U.S. history. The Hiawatha Halloween Frolic of 1914 featured a parade, a costume contest, treats, and music, all meant to distract the youth from wrecking Ms. Krebs’ precious posies. The event caught on, and Halloween parades and parties spread across the country, so you can thank Ms. Krebs for your local parade. Or thank the rebellious kids who stomped on her flowers, I guess.
Fears over weaponized Halloween candy are way overstated
I check my child’s candy for foreign substances every Halloween, even though I know I won’t find any; the idea of him biting into an apple with a hidden razor blade inside is so horrific, it overrides logic. But it’s not actually something worth worrying about. Despite warnings delivered from the federal government and countless anecdotal reports, there has never been a case of a drug dealer putting LSD, fentanyl, or any other illegal drug in children’s Halloween candy. (There was one case that was close: back in 1959, Dr. William Shyne, a Long Island dentist, gave out candy-covered laxatives to kiddies on Halloween, for reasons he never explained.) It’s the same with needles and razor blades. There was one case, in 2000, of a man who hid needles in Halloween candy, but trick or treating has been around for over 100 years, so it’s an extremely isolated occurrence.
Halloween: The movie
Released in 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween inspired the “slasher” genre that took over horror films in the 1980s. It was produced for only $300,000 and grossed over $47 million (around $150 million in today-money), placing it among the most profitable independent films ever made. Halloween has spawned 12 other “official” Halloween movies (although some would argue that Halloween III doesn’t count; it’s set around Halloween, but has nothing to do with the other Halloween films) and thousands of imitators.
Christmas used to be the “ghost story” holiday
Ghost stories (and their modern equivalent, horror movies) are firmly enmeshed with Halloween culture, but Christmas was actually the ghost story holiday in Victorian England.
“Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories,” Jerome K. Jerome wrote in 1891. Despite the most famous Christmas story, “A Christmas Carol,” being a straight-up ghost story, the tradition has nearly entirely died out.
The post by LifeHacker.com appears on South Florida Reporter.