MY TOWN’s
Halloween Must-Do Events!

You may know the day simply as Halloween but this extraordinary custom spans centuries.

The word Halloween has been shortened to its current form from the once Hallowe’en  which is truncated from  All Hallow’s Evening.

With one definition of “Hallow”  being simply “Saint”, the path of the name is also linked to  “ All Saints Day” and  “All Soul’s Day”.

One of the first references to The Feast of All Hallows is  from 748A.D.

Through another name, the Festival of the Dead, we can trace customs and celebration to ancient Egypt, Buddhist festivals, the Hindu ritual Pitri Paksha, Mexico’s Dia de Los Muertos, ancient Persia,  the Pacific Islands, and even the Inca custom “Ayamarca” which also translates to Festival of the Dead.

Today’s Halloween is a combination of all these customs and beliefs but its main root may just lie in the folk traditions of  the ancient Celtic Festival of Samhein, when it was believed  that the spirits could walk amongst us at this time.

It was thought that by dressing up in disguises spirits would take little notice of you thinking you were one of them, or perhaps you could even scare them off.

These customs gave way in Ireland to the more modern practice of children going door to door dressed in costumes (guising) & carrying lanterns made out of turnips with gruesome carved faces  in anticipation of receiving cakes, fruit and money from the residents inside, less they receive a prank instead.

Immigrants from Europe brought the tradition to North America where turnip jack-o-lanterns gave way to the abundant pumpkin and the term “guising” in the 1930’s became the widespread  tradition loved by millions of kids known as  “trick or treating”.