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The Origins of Halloween
October 29, 2025 at 12:04 PM EDT
By WeatherBug Meteorologist, Dan Rupp
The spookiest time of the year is here but have you ever wondered where Halloween and its themes originated?
A lot of the big themes from Halloween can be attributed to the Celtic festival of Samhain which was a pagan religious celebration to welcome harvesting season at the end of summer. In fact, the orange and black colors associated with the holiday represented the autumn harvest season and the death of summer, respectively. Furthermore, the day before ‘All Saints Day’ was named ‘All Hallows Eve’ which eventually turned into Halloween.
The iconic Jack-o’-lanterns come from an Irish legend named Stingy Jack who would wander the Earth for eternity and be guided by lights from coal in carved out turnips made by the Devil. The local Irish would eventually carve out their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits. Immigrants would soon bring this tradition to America and associate seasonal pumpkin carving with the Jack-o’-lantern during Halloween.
As for the costumes, the Celts would dress up in disguises to avoid being mistaken for spirits that were believed to roam the Earth during the Samhain celebration. The trick-or-treating aspect has multiple theories. The first is that the Celtic people would leave out food to appease wandering spirits and the second was from the Scottish practice of “guising” which was a non-religious replacement for “souling”. Souling was when children and poor adults would collect food and money from homes in exchange for prayers for the dead. Scottish Guisers would swap out the prayers for jokes, songs, or “tricks”. The last theory is “belsnickeling”, a German-American Christmas tradition where neighborhood kids would dress up in costume and the local neighborhood parents would have to guess which kids were in what costumes. If the parents got it wrong, the kids would receive a treat.
What’s up with all the candles and candy corn? Long ago towering bonfires were lit to guide souls seeking the afterlife, but candles have now largely replaced the long-standing tradition. And for the candy corn, that was invented by the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia back in the 1880s but did not become popular until the 1950s when trick-or-treating took off. It was originally called “Chicken Feed” which can now give candy corn haters an argument for their opinionated distaste of the tri-colored treat! HA HA HAppy Halloween!
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Image Courtesy of Pixabay.com
A lot of the big themes from Halloween can be attributed to the Celtic festival of Samhain which was a pagan religious celebration to welcome harvesting season at the end of summer. In fact, the orange and black colors associated with the holiday represented the autumn harvest season and the death of summer, respectively. Furthermore, the day before ‘All Saints Day’ was named ‘All Hallows Eve’ which eventually turned into Halloween.
The iconic Jack-o’-lanterns come from an Irish legend named Stingy Jack who would wander the Earth for eternity and be guided by lights from coal in carved out turnips made by the Devil. The local Irish would eventually carve out their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits. Immigrants would soon bring this tradition to America and associate seasonal pumpkin carving with the Jack-o’-lantern during Halloween.
As for the costumes, the Celts would dress up in disguises to avoid being mistaken for spirits that were believed to roam the Earth during the Samhain celebration. The trick-or-treating aspect has multiple theories. The first is that the Celtic people would leave out food to appease wandering spirits and the second was from the Scottish practice of “guising” which was a non-religious replacement for “souling”. Souling was when children and poor adults would collect food and money from homes in exchange for prayers for the dead. Scottish Guisers would swap out the prayers for jokes, songs, or “tricks”. The last theory is “belsnickeling”, a German-American Christmas tradition where neighborhood kids would dress up in costume and the local neighborhood parents would have to guess which kids were in what costumes. If the parents got it wrong, the kids would receive a treat.
What’s up with all the candles and candy corn? Long ago towering bonfires were lit to guide souls seeking the afterlife, but candles have now largely replaced the long-standing tradition. And for the candy corn, that was invented by the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia back in the 1880s but did not become popular until the 1950s when trick-or-treating took off. It was originally called “Chicken Feed” which can now give candy corn haters an argument for their opinionated distaste of the tri-colored treat! HA HA HAppy Halloween!
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Image Courtesy of Pixabay.com