Every October we it's acceptable to dress as movie villains and demand sugar from strangers.
It’s the one night of the year where the "weird" becomes the "norm," but the logic behind it is far older than a horror movie.
Originally, the costume wasn't about being seen; it was about hiding. During the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, people believed the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. They wore masks and animal skins to "blend in" with the spirits roaming the earth.
If a ghost saw you, they’d think you were one of them and leave you alone. Apparently we’ve turned a survival tactic into a fashion show.
Children ring doorbells to fill plastic buckets with fun-sized Snickers. This is a blend of "mumming" and "souling."
In the Middle Ages, the poor would go door-to-door on All Souls' Day, offering to pray for the homeowners' dead relatives in exchange for "soul cakes."
If you didn't pay up, the "trick" wasn't a prank—it was the threat of a curse or bad luck.
We carve faces into pumpkins and put LEDs inside but the original lanterns weren't pumpkins—they were turnips.
According to Irish folklore, a man named "Stingy Jack" tricked the Devil and was cursed to wander the earth with only a burning coal inside a carved-out turnip to light his way.
When the tradition hit America, immigrants swapped the small, hard-to-carve turnips for the much more convenient, native pumpkin.
A celebration of all things macabre and frightening. Stripped of the horror movies, the "truth" of Halloween is the Final Harvest.
It marks the exact midpoint between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice. It’s a boundary holiday—the moment we stop looking at the growth of summer and start preparing for the "death" of winter.
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