Episode 20: Halloween

Why do we bob for apples? Why is candy corn a thing? Where did the name "Halloween" come from? Give this episode a listen to find out!

Transcript

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Hey everybody, I'm Shannon, and welcome to the They Hid What Podcast. On this podcast, I explore parts of history that have been kept hidden or swept under the rug. In this week's episode, I will be discussing Halloween. Let's get into it. It's not hidden, duh, but I did learn some interesting origins to our everyday Halloween traditions. So let's begin. The Celtic Festival of Sawin originated over 2,000 years ago. It was to celebrate the new year on November 1st, a time that marked the end of summer, the harvest, and the beginning of winter. This was a time that was associated with death because the Celts believed that the night before the new year, October 31st, was the time when the boundary between worlds, living and dead, that is, became blurred. October 31st became the day when ghosts were believed to return to Earth. Celts thought that Druid or Celtic priests could easily make predictions about the future during this time. It was said that, quote, for a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter. The Druids would extinguish their hearth fires and join together to light one large bonfire. Crops and animals were burned as sacrifices to the Celts deities, and it was common for worshippers to wear costumes. These costumes typically included animal heads and hides and were worn in an attempt to confuse and ward off evil spirits that came back to earth that night. By 43 AD, the Roman Empire conquered the majority of the Celtic territory. The Romans ruled this territory for 400 years and combined two of their festivals with Sawin. The first was Pheralia, which was the day in late October to commemorate the passing of the dead. It is of note that only one article I found said that this was in October. Everywhere else marks the festival as February 21st as the day to celebrate the dead. So I'm guessing this could be a difference in calendars. The second festival was for the goddess Pomona. Pomona was the goddess of fruit and trees. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is an epic poem that retells over 250 mythological tales, it says, quote, No other hamodrid of the wood nymphs of Latinum tended to the garden more skillfully or was more devoted to the orchid's care, hence her name. The symbol of Pomona is an apple, and it's believed that the game bobbing for apples stems from the celebration of Pomona. Let's talk about Pope Gregory III because why not? Pope Greg ruled from about February 730 to November 741. It was Pope Gregory III that designated November 1st as the day to honor All Saints, or All Saints Day as it's now known. May 13th was originally All Martyr's Day, but it was combined with All Saints Day and moved to November 1st. All Saints Day was called All Hallows or All Hallomus. The Middle English All Hallomis meant All Saints Day, and the night before that was called All Hallows Eve. So let's scoot up a few hundred years to 1000 AD when the Christian Church made November 2nd All Souls Day, a day to honor the dead. I read that quote. It's widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day celebration is marked with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up as saints, angels, and devils. So you can certainly see the similarities. That was all Europe. Now on to America. In colonial America, it was noted that, quote, beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, and an American version of all saints and sowen was born. The first celebrations of this time included public events held to celebrate the harvest, and people would share stories of the dead, fortunes would be told, there was dancing and singing. This was also a time for mischief making and ghost stories. In the middle of the 19th century in America, the annual parties to mark the holiday were common, but it wasn't celebrated everywhere in the country. In the second half of the 19th century, there was an influx of Irish immigrants who came to America after fleeing the potato famine. These Celts brought their own influence on how to celebrate the Halloween season. Since there are a few different holidays and names to mark the same two days, I'm just going to use Halloween going forward. Trick-or-treating was introduced as a way for the community to celebrate Halloween. To prevent tricks or mischief, treats would be offered. There were three theories as to how tricks or treats came to be, all based on factual events or traditions. Number one, Celtic people would leave food out for the spirits traveling during the night. Over time, people began to dress up as ghosts in exchange for food and drink. Two, the Scottish practice of geising or souling. During Middle Ages, children and adults would collect food and money from homes in returns for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day. Later, geysers stopped offering prayers and instead offered songs, jokes, and other tricks. 3. Bell snickling, the German American Christmas tradition. Children would dress in costume and then call on their neighbors to see if the adults could guess the identities of the disguised. In one version of the practice, the children were rewarded with food or other treats if no one could identify them. Things like fruits, nuts, coins, and toys were given out as the treat. By the end of the 1800s, there was a movement in America to make Halloween a holiday more about community than ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft. Halloween parties became the most common way to celebrate. There would be games like bobbing for apples and fortune telling, seasonal foods were served, and costumes. Adults were encouraged by community leaders to remove anything frightening or grotesque out of the celebrations. And by the 20th century, American Halloween lost its superstitious and religious elements. In the 1950s, America had experienced a baby boom, and there were now a lot of kids. Parties moved into school classrooms or homes, and trick-or-treating became more popular. Since there were more kids participating in trick or treating, candy companies started selling small, individually wrapped candies. By the 1970s, these candies became so common that parents feared that children eating anything that wasn't wrapped had to be unsafe. Here are a few more origins of our favorite Halloween traditions. Carving pumpkins had originated in Ireland, where they had used turnips. This tradition was, quote, allegedly based on a legend about a man named Stingy Jack, who repeatedly trapped the devil and only let him go on the condition that Jack would never go to hell. But when Jack died, he learned that heaven did not want his soul either, so he was forced to wander the earth as a ghost for eternity. The devil gave Jack a burning lump of coal in a carved-out turnip to light his way. Locals eventually began carving scary faces into their own turnips to frighten away evil spirits. Candy apples had become popular by the early 1900s. It's believed that candy apples were invented accidentally in 1908 by William W. Kobb, a candy maker in Newark, New Jersey. As the story goes, Kobb was experimenting with red cinnamon candy to sell at Christmas time, and he dipped apples on sticks into the red glaze and put them in his window shop to showcase his new candy. But instead of selling the candies, he ended up selling the apples to customers who thought they looked good enough to eat. Candy corn was created by a candy maker at the Wandrel Candy Company in Philadelphia. This candy maker is sometimes credited with inventing the tri-colored candy in the 1880s. But candy corn didn't become a widespread sensation until the Gullitz Company brought the candy to the masses in 1898. Candy corn was originally called chicken feed, and it sold in boxes with the slogan, something worth crowing for. Initially, it was just a fall candy because of corn's association with harvest time. Candy corn later became Halloween-specific when trick or treating grew in popularity during the 1950s, and it could be packaged in small containers. I'm sorry this is another short episode, but I didn't want to let Halloween slip away without sharing some fun notes about the day. Also, I have not been getting email notifications. So I just wanted to say thank you to those of you that have rated the podcast on all the different platforms and uh started following on there too. I'm only just discovering this now, so thanks guys. That's all for this story. Come back next time to learn what else has been hidden.