The Origin of Halloween and Its Connection to Samhain

When most people think of Halloween, they picture costumes, candy, and maybe a front yard covered in inflatable spiders and a giant 12-foot skeleton. But every October, the same question pops up: do Halloween owe its origin to an ancient pagan holiday called Samhain?

After all, both fall around October 31, both deal with death and the supernatural, and both involve disguises and feasting. With so many similarities, it makes sense people wonder if Halloween is just a modern version of the Celtic festival of Samhain.

The truth, though, is a little more complicated. Samhain (pronounced SOW-in meaning “summer’s end”) was a fire festival celebrated in Ireland, Scotland, and parts of Britain by the Ancient Celtic people. It marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. People lit huge bonfires, made offerings to roaming spirits, practiced divination, and honored their dead.

Halloween, on the other hand, is more of a cultural patchwork. Halloween owes a lot to Samhain, but it isn’t simply the same holiday dressed up in modern clothes. Discover the history of Halloween, the origin of your favorite Halloween traditions (like trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins), and the similarities and differences between the two.

What is Samhain?

Samhain was one of the four Ancient Celtic fire festivals. The others were Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh. They are now part of the Wheel of the Year and are still celebrated by many modern pagans and witches. Samhain is also still celebrated across Ireland with festivals and processions throughout the country.

2,000 years ago to celebrate the cross quarter holiday of Samhain, communities gathered at massive bonfires an honored the end of the agricultural year, protected themselves from harm, and prepared for winter. Herds were driven down from summer pastures, the last crops were brought in, and animals unlikely to survive the winter were culled. This made Samhain a time when death was in the air in a quite literal way.

In early Irish folktales like The Adventure of Nera, it’s described as a liminal night when the Otherworld was close, the dead could walk among the living, and fairies (the Aos Sí) were about. Families left out offerings of food and drink to appease spirits, and protective rituals were performed to keep harm at bay. This sense that the veil between worlds was thinner at Samhain gave the festival its enduring association with ghosts and the supernatural.

The Hill of Ward: A Major Center for Samhain Rituals

Recently, County Meath in Ireland was revealed to be an important location for Samhain rituals. In 2014, about 12 miles away from the Hill of Tara, archaeologists uncovered the Hill of Ward. It is also known as Tlachtga, the name of a Celtic Sun Goddess, and along with the discovery, found evidence of massive ceremonial fires dating back to around 500 CE.

Each year at Samhain, locals would extinguish their household fires, then relit them from the sacred blaze on Tlachtga’s summit. The rite symbolized unity and protection, as well as carrying light into the darker half of the year.

Dr. Steve David, the head archeologist leading the excavation, told the BBC, “It is a magical and mystical place… We have found evidence of intense burning there, whether you want to equate that with Samhain or not… This monument is associated with fire… The medieval texts would associate this very strongly with an annual fire festival.”

What is Halloween?

Halloween is a modern holiday celebrated on October 31. It is rooted in a mixture of Celtic, Christian, and folk traditions. Its name comes from All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day. “Hallows” was an old word for saints and, in Scotland, the phrase was shortened to Hallowe’en (from “All Hallows’ Even”), which eventually became, simply, Halloween.

Irish and Scottish immigrants brought souling, guising, and turnip carving to North America in the 19th century. Those customs eventually evolved into a secular traditions involving costumes, pumpkin carving, and trick-or-treating.

How Did We Get from Samhain to Halloween?

To answer question, we need to take a look at history and the creation of some Christian holidays.

When Christian missionaries arrived in Ireland and Scotland, they didn’t try to erase the Samhain traditions. In 601, Pope Gregory the Great in a letter to Abbot Mellitus, advised missionaries not to destroy the pagan temples but to repurpose them. And also to allow pagans to keep their festivals but to recenter them around the saints and the Christian god instead.

By the 9th century, Christians were celebrating All Saints Day, a day honoring the souls of those believed to be in heaven. In 837, Pope Gregory IV declared the holiday’s official observance would be on November 1.

Then in 998, the Odilo of Cluny dedicated the day following All Saints Day to be the day to pray for the souls stuck in purgatory. November 2 became All Souls Day and the time between October 31 and November 2 became known as Allhallowtide.

While the church was adding holidays, Samhain never went away. While All Saints and All Souls Days were becoming more of the focus of the time, bonfires, divination, and fortune telling was still happening.

By the late Middle Ages, customs were emerging that would feel familiar today. On October 31, in Scotland and Ireland, children took part in guising, where they dressed up in crude costumes, sometimes painted their faces, and would perform in return for food or coins.

In England, people practiced souling on November 1 and 2, where they would exchange prayers for soul cakes. Soul Cakes aren’t really a part of Samhain feasts, but I’ve included them in this Samhain recipe collection because over time they’ve become associated with the holiday.

Halloween Comes to the United States

When Halloween first made it across the Atlantic with the English, it didn’t look much like the holiday we know today. The Puritans rejected nearly all traditional feast days, from Christmas to May Day, and All Hallows Eve was no exception.

But elsewhere in the colonies, such as in Maryland and parts of the South, communities held harvest gatherings where neighbors shared food, told ghost stories, and sometimes played lighthearted divination games.

The real turning point came in the 19th century, when large waves of Irish and Scottish immigrants fled famine and brought their guising, souling, and turnip carving customs (such as the Dumb Supper ritual) with them.

By the late 1800s, Halloween was becoming popular. Community leaders, newspapers, and women’s magazines encouraged neighborhood gatherings, ghost stories, and fortune-telling activities and as a way to rein in mischief and teenage pranks.

Then, the phrase “trick or treat” appeared in a handful of Canadian newspapers on November 3, 1927. At that time the meaning was different from how we see it today. Essentially it was about youths causing trouble and demanding treats or else they’d play a trick.

It wasn’t until the 1930s and 40s, that the custom of children dressing up and going door to door for candy began to standardize, drawing on those souling and guising traditions. After the sugar rationing from World War II lifted and suburbs flourished, trick-or-treating became the centerpiece of the holiday.

And it wasn’t long until candy companies, costume makers, and Hollywood films fueled Halloween’s rapid growth.

Today, Halloween is huge. In the U.S. alone, consumers spent a record $12.2 billion in 2023 on costumes, candy, and decorations. And, while kids still trick-or-treat, the fastest-growing Halloween segment is actually adults who are spending money on costumes, bars, themed events, and haunted attractions.

The Origin of Halloween Traditions

Many of Halloween’s modern traditions have ancient roots in Samhain or in the medieval traditions connected to All Saints and All Souls Day.

1. Trick or Treating

The practice is a combination of souling and guising. As well as a tradition from 18th-century Ireland where there are records of the Láir Bhán (“White Mare”) procession. As part of it, a horse figure linked with the spirit Muck Olla was taken from house to house. Generosity brought blessings, stinginess brought pranks.

When these customs made it to North America in the 19th century, the disguises were simple and homemade at first. But by the 1930s, costume companies like Dennison and Ben Cooper started selling mass-produced costumes and the phrase “trick or treat” had made it into the popular vernacular.

By the 1930s and 40s, American kids had embraced it and after sugar rationing ended in World War II, the custom exploded across the suburbs and became the centerpiece of Halloween.

2. Carving Pumpkins

If there’s one symbol that screams Halloween, it’s carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns. It begins with an old folktale about a miserly blacksmith known as Stingy Jack.

As the story goes, Jack showed kindness to a ragged old man on the road, only to discover the man was actually an angel in disguise. The angel granted him three wishes, and Jack used them selfishly: anyone who sat in his chair, touched his tools, or cut from his tree would be stuck to the spot. The angel, unimpressed, granted the wishes but also decided Jack would never see Heaven.

Jack’s later struck a deal with the Devil. He convinced the Devil to turn into a coin to pay for drinks, only to trap him with a cross in his pocket. When he did, the Devil decided he’d never go to Hell. In another, he tricked the Devil into climbing a tree, then carved a cross into the bark to hold him there. When Jack finally died, he was stuck between realms, doomed to wander the earth as a lost soul.

But, the Devil tossed Jack a burning coal from hell to light his way. To keep it from going out, Jack carved out a turnip, tucked the ember inside, and made himself a lantern. That’s why he became known as “Jack of the Lantern,” which was later shortened to “Jack O’Lantern.”

The eerie glow of his wandering light was said to appear in bogs and marshes as will-o’-the-wisps or the ignis fatuus. It’s a natural occurrence, but it could lure travelers into danger.

To avoid meeting Jack, or their fate at the bottom of a peat bog, people in Ireland and Scotland began carving their own lanterns out of turnips, beets, mangelwurzels, or potatoes, often with grotesque faces, and setting them outside their doors.

When immigrants brought the custom to North America, the humble turnip got swapped for the pumpkin. It was larger, easier to carve, and there were plenty of them around.

3. Black and Orange

There’s no evidence the Celts tied specific colors to the festival. But, the colors you would have seen were those that nature provided. There was the orange glow of fire, the dark of night, the browns and reds of autumn leaves, and the white of animal bones or milk.

That said, they probably did influence the black and orange colors we associate with Halloween today and those that we use on altars for Samhain. The palette was cemented in America thanks mainly to early 1900s Halloween postcards and Dennison’s Bogie Books which featured black cats, bats, and pumpkins in orange and black prints.

4. Bobbing for Apples

Bobbing for apples is one of those “why are we doing this” games. And, perhaps that’s because the unique activity began as a form of fortune-telling. Its roots are often traced back to the Roman festival of Pomona, goddess of fruit and abundance, which was held about the same time as Samhain.

When the Romans reached Britain in the 1st century CE, their apple-themed courtship rituals blended with local seasonal customs. Apples already carried strong mythic resonance in Celtic tradition and appear in Irish tales like Emain Ablach, the Isle of Apples, and in Arthurian Avalon, so it made sense to weave them into divination.

In Britain, each apple in the game was given the name of someone a young woman liked. If she managed to bite the right apple on her first try, the match was destined for success. Getting it on her second try meant the relationship wouldn’t work out.

In Ireland, the game was known as “snap apple,” where instead of dunking in a basin, players lunged at apples dangling from strings. Whichever unmarried person bit into one first was said to be the next to wed.

5. Black Cats

I love black cats and tend to only adopt black cats, partially because they still have the lowest adoption rates because people think they’re evil. They’re not, but where most modern Halloween traditions don’t actually have a strong direct connection to Samhain, the black cat does.

The Cat Sìth (pronounced “caught shee”) is a fairy-creature from Scottish Highland lore, described as a large black cat with a white spot on its chest. It’s similar, but different from the Yule Cat. Folktales say the Cat Sìth prowled during Samhain, stealing souls before they could be claimed by the gods. Scottish households left out offerings of cream as protection against it.

By the Middle Ages, cats, especially black ones, had become entangled in European witchcraft lore. They were thought to be witches’ familiars or even witches who had shape-shifted.

Many years later, in the 20th century when Halloween grew in popularity, black cats were a natural fit for decorations, postcards, and costumes because of their historical connection with witches and the spirit world. By the 1920s, they were showing up right alongside pumpkins, bats, and witches as “official” symbols of Halloween.

Sources and Further Reading

Irish Myths
“The Origins of Halloween Traditions” by Library of Congress
Foras Feasa ar Éirinn by Geoffrey Keating
“Halloween,” by Robert Burns
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland by Lady Jane Wilde
The Silver Bough by Florence Marian McNeill
Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton