If you’re a frequent reader of Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors magazine, you know we love a good party! From our magazine’s 5-year anniversary to the 4th of July festivities, we’re your source for finding an excuse to celebrate every month of the year!
October brings falling leaves, crisp air, long nights and grocery store shelves filled with plentiful pumpkin-spiced products. While it’s a month that many consider a time to recover from the back-to-school chaos and recharge before the hectic holiday season, others see an opportunity to celebrate the spooky season all month long.
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and plenty of superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), who celebrated their new year on November 1st — that day marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter, a season that the Celts associated with human death.
They believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became obscured. So, on the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Celts set places at the dinner table to celebrate the spirits, left treats on doorsteps and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.
October 31st was also a day that Celtic priests (Druids) felt that the presence of these spirits made it easier to make predictions about the future. They built large sacred bonfires to celebrate the event and wore costumes of animal heads and skins while telling each other’s fortunes. As this tradition evolved and spread to other lands and religions, the holiday became known as Halloween.
During colonial times in the US, the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians combined, and an American version of Halloween emerged. The first celebrations were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing. However, the celebration of Halloween was very limited in colonial New England because of the strict Protestant belief systems. Halloween was much more common in the southern colonies.
Halloween had become a national tradition during the second half of the 19th century, and Americans began dressing up in costumes, going house to house, asking for money or food. By the 1930s, Halloween had evolved into a community-centered holiday with parades and parties. Then, in the 1950s, with the surge in young children during the baby boom, Halloween became a holiday primarily focused on the children, and candy, of course!
Did you know that one-quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween? Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it our second-largest commercial holiday after Christmas.
Halloween will be celebrated this year on Tuesday, October 31st, but for many of our friends and neighbors, the festivities begin early in the month. And for a few of our passionate pumpkin-loving neighbors, the ghosts, goblins and spiderwebs appear right after Labor Day.
How you celebrate is up to you. Our community always offers plenty of opportunities to dress up and gather at trunk-or-treats, neighborhood parties and school parades. There are also some great family friendly Halloween movies, including Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. And if you’re wondering who will be trick or treating this year, we’re willing to bet the most popular people paying you a visit will be Barbie and Ken, Taylor Swift, Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Wednesday Addams to name a few. Just be sure to grab your candy early so you can give out the good stuff!