Halloween is a holiday celebrated every year on the night of October 31. The word Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows Evening, also known as Halloween or Hallows Eve.
Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses” and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries took in the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced “sah-win”). The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween. People would wear masks and costumes to imitate evil spirits.
Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on Halloween in which they go from house to house in costumes, asking for treats with the question, “Trick or treat?” The trick part of trick or treat is a threat to play a trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become expected that if you live in a neighborhood with kids you should buy treats for trick-or-treaters.
Part of the history of Halloween is Halloween costumes. The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages, and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling,” when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of “pulling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas.”
Heres a video about the history of Halloween. http://www.history.com/videos/bet-you-didnt-know-halloween#haunted-history-of-halloween
Resources:
http://www.halloweenhistory.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween