My attention has been caught these past few weeks by the general and strong effort people put to be well prepared for Halloween. Houses are decorated and people will have fun in costume party on the D Day of October 31st.
In France this feast is not officially celebrated. Only young children like to go in costume from house in house to ask candy, but without any sort of idea of the reason of why they do that that day.
So I was curious to understand the origin of this celebration so present in the United States and try to figure out how marketing had taken the opportunity (again) to harness a tradition into a making-money product.
I did some researches about Halloween to better understand the origin of this celebration.
I learned that this feast was a pagan holiday originally celebrated in Ireland, Great Britain, Scotland and Northern Europe originating from the Celtic tradition.
Celebrated during the night of October 31st, it corresponds to Samhain day – meaning End of the Summer -. This was the last day of the Celtic calendar, the end of the harvests and the occasion for great festivals in villages. Because Celt people were very superstitious, they feared that the soul of dead could roamed in the village and throw a bad fate on their house. To keep the souls quiet, the tradition was to put gifts at the entrance of the village to keep them far enough and to make sure next year will be a good year.
It is interesting to know that Halloween is the shortened wording for All Hallow’s Even – Hallow meaning Holy and Even meaning Evening in old English- which is the abbreviation of All Hallow Evening.
This pagan holiday was turned into a Christian day known as All Saint’s day celebrated on November 1st.
It is good to see people perpetuating the tradition with the most famous symbols like the carved pumpkin, the lintel nailed to the door and other symbols. However, this special day seems to have more and more turned into a fun and costume party day. Children wear costume and go from door to door with the ‘’Trick-or-treating ‘’, other watch horror movies, and elder going in haunting attractions. These activities are of course well prepared by marketing, always in the lockout to make business, with adds arriving in your mail box by mid August and stores entirely dedicated to Halloween derived products.
I have nothing against to use tradition to support and develop business. However, I think traditions should remain traditions with their context, history and symbols explained and perpetuated over the generations and not limited to a marketing product.
