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The History Of Halloween | BuzzFeed Unsolved Network | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The History Of Halloween
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Summary
Core Theme
Halloween, now a multi-billion dollar commercial holiday, has evolved from ancient Celtic pagan rituals celebrating death and rebirth into a secular celebration deeply ingrained in modern culture.
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every year millions of people around the
country spill into streets
dressed as fairies goblins characters
from their favorite movie franchise
and everything in between partying and
making mischief
but outside of a good time how many know
why they do it
today halloween is a billion dollar
industry but exactly
how did it get there
while today halloween is synonymous with
commercialism it wasn't always that way
the word halloween comes from the words
hollow meaning holy person
and een deriving as a contraction of eve
and all hallows eve finds its origins
all the way back in the time of the
ancient celtic pagans with the holiday
of samhain
a three-day fire festival that
essentially celebrated death and rebirth
the celts who lived in what is now
ireland scotland the uk and parts of
northern europe
based their calendar on the wheel of a
year essentially divided into two halves
the light and the dark when one gave way
to the other this transition was marked
by a fire festival
the word samhain translates in the
modern irish to summer's end
samhain celebrated the dead and
particularly the celebratory feast paid
homage to loved ones who had passed away recently
recently
essentially as an invitation for their
spirits to rejoin the living
many of sauwan's original rituals have
been lost but what we do know of their
holiday traditions from celtic folklore
and ancient roman historians
is that they were intended to connect
them to spirits including costumes most
likely animal or furs to help them hide
from the unfriendly ones
feasting and making lanterns from
hollowed out gourds seemingly the birth
of the modern pumpkin jack-o-lantern
sacrifices generally of crops or animals
were made during this time as an
offering to the spirits
it was popular for tricks or pranks to
be played by humans and blamed on
as a result of the roman invasion with
most of the celtic land being conquered
by rome in 43 ce
the spread of christianity and
catholicism would force pagan celtic
traditions to evolve or be completely repressed
repressed
in part many celtic traditions and
popular pagan practices were reframed to
fit within a christian narrative as a
way of converting people with greater
comfort and ease
samhain would evolve into all saints day
which was also referred to as
all hallows day and was intended to be a
day to celebrate the christian saints
and martyrs
essentially instead of honoring pagan
gods and mischievous spirits
they now celebrated christian figures
while the sacrifices were replaced by
food offerings to the poor
the tricks and pranks continued but
instead they were now attributed to the
spirits of the saints
halloween evolved as a more secular
version of all hallows eve
and eventually it would become more
popular in common practice than all
saints day
while halloween has its origins in the
british isles there's a great disparity
in its popularity in former british colonies
colonies
the puritans who came to colonize
america were protestant
and did not celebrate holidays of the
catholic church as they were believed to
lead to idolatry
in the early days of the american
colonies celebrations of halloweens were
mostly forbidden as they were deemed
too pagan or too catholic by the
protestant colonizers
though elements of it began to
incorporate into secular harvest related
events in the 1800s
the mid 19th century saw a large influx
of immigrants entering the country
especially irish immigrants who were
greatly impacted by the potato famine
with these people came halloween customs
out of which one of america's favorite
in keeping with the mischief children
would dress in costumes and be given
money or fruit
for artistic offerings like poetry songs
or even jokes instead of prayers
by the late 19th century children were
playing seemingly innocuous pranks on
their small local communities
adults would soon find incentive to
dissuade children from playing pranks
enter trick-or-treating the 20th century
would finally see the commercialization
of halloween
by the 1920s and 30s halloween
merchandise evolved to pre-made costumes
for both children and adults
after world war ii in the 1950s the
economic boom had candy manufacturers
getting on the halloween bandwagon
movies and tv are also largely
responsible for the proliferation of
halloween as a mass-market holiday
cinemas in the 50s offered scary movie festivals
festivals
and in the 60s the new television
industry began running halloween
by 2015 the national retail federation
predicted spending on halloween could
reach 6.9 billion
dollars whether you believe that we've
lost the meaning or not
halloween has since evolved far beyond
the days of pagan fire festivals
for more than a month out of the year
costume stores show up out of nowhere
candy corn and halloween themed candies
dominate whole aisles of grocery stores
and spooky shows and movies build out
entire tv station schedules
whether you like it or not whether you
want to dress up as a gruesome goblin or
a sexy cat
or ignore the holiday altogether
halloween has stood the test of time and proven
proven
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