Discovering the origins of customs, costumes and candy

The Lion's float travels down Main Street at the annual Halloween parade.
photo courtesy of Host Lion's Club

by Elizabeth Harrington

With Halloween just around the corner many people are scrambling to buy candy and costumes, while many others are busy planning their parties. You know Halloween is coming when every night there’s a flashback to our childhood on television, Hocus Pocus, A Nightmare before Christmas, Halloweentown, and Twitches on Disney Channel and Harry Potter Week on ABC Family.

Locally, a very important aspect of Halloween is Woburn's Halloween Parade, which was October 26 this year. As always it was hosted by the Lions Club, and this year was its 60th Anniversary.

About 80,000 people, mainly Woburnites and many from other surrounding towns, came to watch floats travel the two-mile route. Residents living along the route had chairs set up for their coveted spot they maintain year after year as early as Friday night.

Some 80 floats and 25 bands participated in the time-honored parade this year. All proceeds, as with past years, went to the Massachusetts Lions Eye Research Foundation.

With the scrambling for candy and costumes, and the tradition of the Halloween parade, you might ask, when did Halloween start? Who thought of putting on a costume and going house to house trick-or-treating?

Halloween is thought to have originated from an ancient Celtic Festival of Samhain. During the festival, people would light bonfires and dress up in costumes to scare off ghosts. Samhain is a festival celebrated at the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture; during this time ancient pagans would prepare for the upcoming winter by taking stock of all of their produce.

So why is Halloween always on October 31? On October 31 the Gaels believed that the border between the living and the dead worlds were broken, and that all of the dead spirits from the “underworld” were going to come back and haunt them. Bonfires were lit to try and ward off evil spirits, and many people wore masks to try and imitate the ghosts.

Trick-or-treating is similar to the medieval process called “souling”.”Souling” was when poor people would go door to door on “Hallomas”, which occurred on November 1, and receive food in exchange for prayers of the dead. “Souling” originated throughout Ireland and Britain with similar processes occurred in Italy, but there is no evidence that “souling” was ever practiced in North America. The earliest known reference of any type of ”ritual begging” occurred in 1911, when a newspaper in Ontario reported that it was common for young children to go door to door on “Hallowmas” between the hours of six and seven,  looking for treats, and the rest is history.

We all remember being the usual witch, princess, or superhero as kids and we all have memories of Halloween night but sadly, now that we are in high school it’s frowned upon for us high school students to dress up and go trick-or-treating, so hopefully you’ve recovered from the horribly disappointing realization the you missed the Elsa boat by now. At least there’s the Student Council Halloween contest to participate in on Friday. So, what will you be dressing up as this year?