Haunting History of Halloween-Pumpkin calving, trick or treating, cosplaying and more!

Happy Halloween! Or is it? Ever wondered why out of all the foods in the world we decide to calve pumpkins, and calve scary faces on them? Ever wondered why we dress up and knock on people's doors asking for sweets, which seems like a nice thing to do, except you are dressed in a bloody outfit with ghoulishly scary makeup? Now you think about it, Halloween doesn't really make sense, which is why in this Halloween Edition blog post, I will explain the dark origins of Halloween and why people celebrate it!

When did it all start?

Halloween celebrations date back over 2,000 years ago, to a Celtic festival called Samhain. The Celts strongly believed in ghostly spirits, and the Festival of Samhain was created as a way for them to scare off the evil spirits. The Festival also gave people a closer understanding of life and death, and uncovered more mysteries, and gave people more questions. But, why do we dress up as ghosts and witches and vampires if the whole point of the festival was to scare away the spirits, instead of inviting them? Well, I guess that's another mystery and question!

Pumpkin Calving:

Doesn't pumpkin calving seem like a really random thing? And how does it link to the Celtic festival of Samhain (Halloween)? After all, people are simply buying pumpkins, throwing away the mushy inside parts and making a face out of the rest of it! However, despite the confusion and what seems to be a random thing, the pumpkin calving also originates from the Samhain festival, where, linking back to their idea of evil spirits, they would calve turnips instead to scare off the spirits, however, when Irish immigrants went to America and tried following the same ideas, they struggled finding turnips so instead they used pumpkins.

Trick or Treat?

Not certainly, but one theory suggests that during Samhain, Celts would leave food out to appease the spirits who travelled during night. (Appease meaning to soothe something and make it content). As well as this, trick or treating dates back to Ireland and Scotland, when people would perform a small performance, in a Halloween costume, to be rewarded with treats. So, are you going to get rewarded, or are you going to get a FRIGHT!? BOO! Haha, got ya!

Cosplaying:

Cosplay, a popular hobby, is simply people dressing up as their favourite character from a book, series, show etc! But how does this link to Halloween? Now, I'm no Halloween expert, so even I had to search up a couple of things, and from the various websites and resource pages I've looked at, there seem to be many different ideas and theories of how cosplaying spooky costumes came about. However, here is the most popular theory:

Some say that during the festival, the world of Gods became visible to humans, which caused a lot of mischief, so some people disguised themselves in "paranormal looking outfits" to try and trick the spirits into thinking that they were one of their own.

BIG QUESTIONS:

In all honesty, there isn't a right or wrong answer for these following questions, the answer for all of them is simply, "we don't know" but what do you think?

1. Is paranormal activity (ghosts and spirits) real?

2. Do you think there is more to the Samhain festival which we don't yet know about, but it could be the missing piece of the puzzle?

3. Is Halloween meant to be a happy, scary or sad celebration?

   
   

In my opinion, I think that paranormal activity has a good chance of being real, I'm not sure how it would be possible, and what science would have to say about it, but you never know! I think its quite cool to believe its real, and instead of having a fear of ghosts (because that it having a fear of the unknown considering they may not be real) but instead to enjoy the mystery and longing to uncover different secrets!

And of course there is more to the festival which we don't know yet! Samhain was over 2,000 years ago! Personally, I think it's almost funny that we are celebrating Halloween in a fun way, yet back in the day it was celebrated because people were genuinely scared, but I like how the celebration has evolved over time into a fun celebration, but it's still kept its spooky meaning.

What do you think? Send your responses in the comment section down below!