During the crazy frenzy of throwing parties, dressing up and decorating the house, people tend to forget to think about why they love Halloween so much in the first place. All of the candy, costumes, trick or treating and decorations 
consume most of their energy this holiday and sadly, because of this, the importance of Halloween fun is easily forgotten.
Did you know that Halloween has been around for thousands of years now? Halloween was actually first celebrated in northern France, Ireland and the UK by the Celts. The day was celebrated a day before the Celtic Samhain festival in November, which they considered to be their New Year.
During this time, the Celts would bring down cattle from the hills and they would gather together in their houses to do handicrafts and tell stories, some of the many things that people still love about Halloween today. Admit it: as scary as they may be, Halloween ghost stories are some of the things you always look forward to hearing every year.
The origin of trick or treating is completely different. This can be attributed to the parades on All Souls’ Day in England where the poor approached rich people and begged them for food. These wealthy families would normally offer the poor some pastries known as soul cakes and the poor would, in turn, pray for the rich people’s dead relatives. Soon, people started giving sweets to kids who arrived at their houses dressed like ghosts or witches and if somebody refused to give them sweets, the kids were entitled to play a practical joke on them. To this day, both children and adults enjoy trick or treating for candy and it is probably the highlight of every child’s year now.
The reason why people celebrate Halloween now by dressing up is because the Celts found the winter to be extremely frightening because they could run out of food at any time. Halloween costumes happen to be another factor that people love about the holiday and these can be traced back to the tradition of the Celts where they covered themselves in costumes and masks, so that ghosts wouldn’t be able to recognize them as they left home to look for food.
Carving faces on pumpkins is another favorite pastime of Halloween and can also be attributed to the Celts who carved various faces on potatoes back in the day. However, after migrating to America, they realized that there were more pumpkins and thus started carving faces on pumpkins instead. This is still a Halloween tradition to this day.
In the United States of America, Halloween is one of the largest commercial holidays today. People now religiously dress up in fancy or scary costumes every year and even decorate their houses to look as scary as possible. However, the eeriness that once came with this particular festival no longer exists nowadays and has instead been replaced by a community spirit filled with fun instead of fear. Happy Halloween!
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