0:02 every year millions of people around the
0:03 country spill into streets
0:06 dressed as fairies goblins characters
0:07 from their favorite movie franchise
0:10 and everything in between partying and
0:11 making mischief
0:13 but outside of a good time how many know
0:15 why they do it
0:17 today halloween is a billion dollar
0:19 industry but exactly
0:31 how did it get there
0:33 while today halloween is synonymous with
0:36 commercialism it wasn't always that way
0:38 the word halloween comes from the words
0:39 hollow meaning holy person
0:42 and een deriving as a contraction of eve
0:44 and all hallows eve finds its origins
0:46 all the way back in the time of the
0:48 ancient celtic pagans with the holiday
0:48 of samhain
0:50 a three-day fire festival that
0:52 essentially celebrated death and rebirth
0:54 the celts who lived in what is now
0:56 ireland scotland the uk and parts of
0:57 northern europe
0:59 based their calendar on the wheel of a
1:02 year essentially divided into two halves
1:04 the light and the dark when one gave way
1:06 to the other this transition was marked
1:08 by a fire festival
1:10 the word samhain translates in the
1:12 modern irish to summer's end
1:14 samhain celebrated the dead and
1:16 particularly the celebratory feast paid
1:18 homage to loved ones who had passed away recently
1:19 recently
1:21 essentially as an invitation for their
1:24 spirits to rejoin the living
1:25 many of sauwan's original rituals have
1:28 been lost but what we do know of their
1:30 holiday traditions from celtic folklore
1:31 and ancient roman historians
1:33 is that they were intended to connect
1:35 them to spirits including costumes most
1:37 likely animal or furs to help them hide
1:38 from the unfriendly ones
1:40 feasting and making lanterns from
1:42 hollowed out gourds seemingly the birth
1:45 of the modern pumpkin jack-o-lantern
1:47 sacrifices generally of crops or animals
1:49 were made during this time as an
1:51 offering to the spirits
1:53 it was popular for tricks or pranks to
1:55 be played by humans and blamed on
2:03 as a result of the roman invasion with
2:04 most of the celtic land being conquered
2:07 by rome in 43 ce
2:08 the spread of christianity and
2:10 catholicism would force pagan celtic
2:12 traditions to evolve or be completely repressed
2:13 repressed
2:15 in part many celtic traditions and
2:17 popular pagan practices were reframed to
2:19 fit within a christian narrative as a
2:21 way of converting people with greater
2:22 comfort and ease
2:24 samhain would evolve into all saints day
2:26 which was also referred to as
2:28 all hallows day and was intended to be a
2:30 day to celebrate the christian saints
2:31 and martyrs
2:32 essentially instead of honoring pagan
2:34 gods and mischievous spirits
2:37 they now celebrated christian figures
2:39 while the sacrifices were replaced by
2:40 food offerings to the poor
2:42 the tricks and pranks continued but
2:44 instead they were now attributed to the
2:46 spirits of the saints
2:48 halloween evolved as a more secular
2:50 version of all hallows eve
2:52 and eventually it would become more
2:54 popular in common practice than all
2:56 saints day
2:58 while halloween has its origins in the
3:00 british isles there's a great disparity
3:02 in its popularity in former british colonies
3:03 colonies
3:05 the puritans who came to colonize
3:06 america were protestant
3:08 and did not celebrate holidays of the
3:10 catholic church as they were believed to
3:12 lead to idolatry
3:13 in the early days of the american
3:15 colonies celebrations of halloweens were
3:17 mostly forbidden as they were deemed
3:19 too pagan or too catholic by the
3:21 protestant colonizers
3:22 though elements of it began to
3:24 incorporate into secular harvest related
3:26 events in the 1800s
3:28 the mid 19th century saw a large influx
3:30 of immigrants entering the country
3:32 especially irish immigrants who were
3:34 greatly impacted by the potato famine
3:36 with these people came halloween customs
3:38 out of which one of america's favorite
3:43 in keeping with the mischief children
3:45 would dress in costumes and be given
3:46 money or fruit
3:49 for artistic offerings like poetry songs
3:51 or even jokes instead of prayers
3:53 by the late 19th century children were
3:54 playing seemingly innocuous pranks on
3:56 their small local communities
3:58 adults would soon find incentive to
4:00 dissuade children from playing pranks
4:02 enter trick-or-treating the 20th century
4:04 would finally see the commercialization
4:06 of halloween
4:08 by the 1920s and 30s halloween
4:10 merchandise evolved to pre-made costumes
4:12 for both children and adults
4:14 after world war ii in the 1950s the
4:16 economic boom had candy manufacturers
4:19 getting on the halloween bandwagon
4:20 movies and tv are also largely
4:22 responsible for the proliferation of
4:25 halloween as a mass-market holiday
4:27 cinemas in the 50s offered scary movie festivals
4:28 festivals
4:30 and in the 60s the new television
4:31 industry began running halloween
4:38 by 2015 the national retail federation
4:40 predicted spending on halloween could
4:42 reach 6.9 billion
4:44 dollars whether you believe that we've
4:45 lost the meaning or not
4:47 halloween has since evolved far beyond
4:49 the days of pagan fire festivals
4:50 for more than a month out of the year
4:52 costume stores show up out of nowhere
4:54 candy corn and halloween themed candies
4:57 dominate whole aisles of grocery stores
4:59 and spooky shows and movies build out
5:00 entire tv station schedules
5:02 whether you like it or not whether you
5:04 want to dress up as a gruesome goblin or
5:05 a sexy cat
5:07 or ignore the holiday altogether
5:09 halloween has stood the test of time and proven
5:10 proven
