Many celebrate Halloween and only know it to be known for scary movies, candy, costumes, and mischief.  Halloween is one of the most celebrated events, while also being the most known event in which many do not know where it originated from. 

Halloween began from the ancient Celtic festival of Shahain, a celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer. According to HISTORY, the end of the year was when Celts would associate the cold winter with death. Because of their beliefs at the time, they would assume that October 31st was the day when people of the dead would rise from their graves and haunt Celts. 

When celebrating the festival, Druids constructed huge bonfires to burn offerings such as crops and animals. The Celts wore the first-ever costumes which consisted of masks made of animal heads or animal skin. Celts believed that every costume was a way to tell each other’s fortunes. Halloween colors of black and orange can also be traced back to the Celtic Festivals. The black represented death, while the orange represented the Autumn harvest season. 

The Celtic traditions had picked up on Christian beliefs during the 9the century. Based on WorldHistory, this was when the name of the occasion of making bonfires and wearing costumes changed to titles like “Alholomesse” and “All-Hallows Eve.” This celebration was more known in southern colonies in the world like colonial New England and Maryland. As time went on, the event merged with the customs of both European ethnic groups and American Indians. This was when Halloween grew to be more of an exciting event where people would play games, tell stories, and dance. 

The most notorious event of Trick Or Treating derived from Americans getting the idea from European traditions and began to dress up in order to go around asking for food or money. Women during this time would believe they could make their male partners become holy by doing tricks with yarn, apples, or mirrors. As time went on, more people started to migrate to the Americas, this caused many traditions to form as one. The merging of Halloween beliefs all clashed together to make what is known today as Halloween.