Now and Then

Among all the holidays which we celebrate today, few are stranger than Halloween, when witches, warlocks, ghosts, and goblins gather after nightfall. It is the night when witchcraft prevails. The souls of the dead return, goblins play evil tricks, and witches ride on their broomsticks.

Halloween is a popular holiday that takes place on October 31st. In the United States and Canada, children dress in costumes and go trick-or-treating, carve jack-o-lanterns out of pumpkins, tell scary stories, and visit haunted houses. People decorate their yards with images of ghosts, skeletons, witches, black cats, and even bats.

Halloween developed from an ancient pagan festival celebrated by Celtic people over 2,000 years ago in the area that is now the United Kingdom, Ireland, and northwestern France. The festival marked the start of the dark winter season.

It was once common for people to leave food out on a table as a treat for spirits believed to be about on Halloween. In England, people went house to house “souling” - asking for small breads called soul cakes - in exchange for prayers. In some areas, groups of masked adults would go door to door asking for food and drink in return for a performance or song.

Today trick or treating is the main Halloween activity for children, who wear costumes and also go from door to door collecting candy and other treats. Ghosts, witches, devils, and other mysterious creatures are the most popular costumes. The neighbors, to avoid having tricks played on them, hand out the goodies to the spooks in their bags or plastic buckets they carry. Homeowners turn on their porch lights as a sign that treats are available.

Jack-o-lanterns are hollowed out pumpkins with a face cut into one side. They originally represented spirits present in the dark, or souls released from Christian purgatory.

According to legend, jack-o-lanterns were named for a character named Jack, who could not enter heaven because he was a miserly, bad-tempered man. He could not enter Hades either, because he had tricked the devil several times. As a result, Jack had to walk the earth forever with only a piece of coal from down below to light his lantern.

Over the centuries, people came to imagine that witches - and sometimes their loyal black cats - rode through the night sky on Halloween, and other unfriendly supernatural creatures also lurked around on October 31st.

But in the 1900's Halloween became a celebration basically for children with trick-or-treating becoming widespread during the 1940's and 1950's. By the late 1900's, Halloween became one of the most profitable holidays for American business. In the weeks before October 31, stores sell decorations, costumes, masks, candy, and cards. Halloween has grown by leaps and bounds.

This tired, old writer still likes to remember the days of her youth with a full moon slowly rising in the east on a clear and cool autumn night. Strange and mysterious things always happened on Halloween, with a black cat on every corner and an owl in every tree. It was a magical night filled with fun, mischief, and a limited belief in rationality.

As a few broken clouds would drift across the moon, my imagination would run wild. And as the years have turned into decades, I can still remember ringing peoples' doorbells and saying “trick-or-treat,” and collecting more candy than I could eat in a week. Boo!