Halloween Costumes & Party Ideas

During the ancient festival of Samhain, the Celts wore costumes of animal heads and skins to avoid being recognized by the malevolent ghosts of the dead.The Celts believed that the hideous masks frightened off the demons who would surely bring misfortune to them should they stay. Even after the festival of Samhain had merged with Halloween around 800 AD, the tradition of wearing costumes on the night of October 31 was retained and is still one of the most widely practiced traditions of Halloween today.

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On the night of Halloween the Celts would carve jack-o-lanterns out of gourds or turnips and place them on porches and in windows to welcome the spirits of loved ones and also to ward off malevolent spirits. The tradition of the jack-o-lantern was brought to America by the immigrants of Scotland and Ireland who found the American native pumpkin bigger, easier to carve and made a perfect jack-o-lantern.

Halloween's origins date back 2000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain which was celebrated on the night of October 31st. Samhain literally means "summers end" and the festival marked the end of the summer harvest and the beginning of winter. On this night the Celts believed that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. It was a night to honor the spirits of loved ones who had passed and to appease the malevolent spirits who could come down to cause trouble. To appease the ghosts the Celtic priests built sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices. During Samhain, the Celts wore costumes of animal heads and skins to avoid being recognized by the ghosts of the dead. When Samhain was over, the Celts re-lit their hearth fires from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter months.

By A.D. 43, the Romans had conquered the Celts and in the following 400 years the Roman festival of Feralia commemorating the passing of the dead was combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

By the 800s, Christianity had spread into Celtic lands and the Catholic church replaced the Celtic-Roman festival of the dead with All Saints day on November 1. This celebration was called All-hallowmas and the night before was called All-hallows Eve and eventually, Halloween.

In latter years, as the European immigrants came to America, they brought their Halloween customs with them. As the beliefs and customs of the different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. Today, there are many Halloween traditions practiced in America, the tradition of dressing in costumes the most popular.