@adambasinger6239

5 months ago

Of all the bits of american culture, this is the one I'm happiest to see spread.

Halloween as a vague concept is old as dirt. Before christianity came to Europe, many places had festivals for the passing of the seasons. In particular, since November is about the final edge point of summer (fall as a 4th season hadn't pulled itself off of summer yet) and the point where you stop being able to grow crops that will mature in time to not be frozen over. A time when the world was going from living to dying.

The costumes and lanterns were defenses against the dead, as this time of year was said to be the point where the barrier between the living and the dead was weakest. So people dressed in costumes to trick vengeful spirits and put lanerns of carved root vegetables outside their homes to keep them away (funnily enough pumpkins wouldn't be used for this purpose for ages, so turnips and other small root vegetables were used). And also because again turning of the seasons, poorer children would go from house to house begging for food to help survive the winter, threatening to invoke the wrath of the dead should the person at the house not oblidge them.

Fast forward to christianity coming in, they wanted to stomp all this out but were unable to since A) its tradition and B) its a really fun tradition, so they did what they always do, recast the celebrations in line with christian tradition and made november first all saints day, a day to celebrate and mourn people lost instead of hiding in fear of wraiths. And was renamed to All hallows eve, or in scottish, halloween.

This spread around but mostly got stamped out in protestant areas of europe (which included most of what would become america and Canada) catholic places kept up with it, including the Irish who in the 19th century brought it over to america. Also at the same time Catholic mexico would have their own spin with dia de los muertos, which combined the idea of the dead visiting earth and the idea of celebrating them into a day where people make shrines to lost family and have a massive party to celebrate their lives.

It would be a bit of a thing for about a hundred years, but come the 1950's then you have a consumerism boom plus the creation of suburbs. So then halloween turned into its modern form, where neighbours compete with each other to do elaborate decorations, and kids go from house to house asking for candy.

Its alot like christmas in that yeah it can be a really consumeristic nothing holiday that has a ton of advertising around it, but it can also be something really damn fun in a way that goes back centuries. And I'll be damned if it doesn't sound like the chinese version isn't doing the best version of it thats mostly people having a good time in an atmosphere of fear and happiness.

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