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History of Halloween Have you ever wondered where Halloween originated? Well, I will tell you. It first started with the Romans, and how they'd have a celebration on October 31st for their god of of the fruit tress, Pomona. The later the Druids (Celtic Priests of England), made the celebration even more special by deciding to have a feast for Samhain, the Lord of the dead. They usually held this celebration on November 1st, but to make it convenient, they moved it to be on October 1st. Trick or treating came from the Irish. On Halloween, poor Irishmen would go around and knock on people's doors and ask for food to take to the Halloween dance. When the poor men saw that the people wouldn't give them food, they'd say warningly, "You treat me, or I'll trick you." The idea of wearing costumes came from the Europeans. They would have their children wear masks and other ghostly looking things because they believed that spirits and ghost came out on Halloween night. So, they would try to trick the other spirits to believe that they were spirits too by wearing these costumes. Where pumpkin carving originated was in England. Kids on Halloween night would carve turnips and place a candle in it to make it glow. They would then go around scaring off the evil ghosts roaming around. When the people from England migrated over to America, they discovered pumpkins and found that they were a lot easier to carve, and their orange color made the candle-light look better. The reason that they are often called Jack-O- Lanterns is because there was a very well known Irish man named Stingy Jack, that would go around playing tricks on people. He was said not to go to either heaven or hell, but would be roaming around in the dark forever. But the devil kindly gave Jack a glowing piece of coal which he put in a hollowed turnip, so Jack could tell where he was going. He was known at the time as Jack of the Lantern, but as time went on, he was called Jack-O-Lantern.
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