By Staff Writer: Madison Lawson
Remember smelling the crisp fall air? Lingering excitement about wearing a new costume? The adrenaline right before adventuring around neighborhoods for candy? This is the feeling that Hallow’s Eve brings to most people. This is a time of the year when children and adults can have fun. Some adults enjoy this time to dress up and express their creativity for one night of the year and use this opportunity to have genuine fun with peers. Many adults enjoy Halloween because they can spend quality time with their children and make core memories. Most children enjoy seeing Halloween décor and seeing their friends or even random people dressed up in scary or extravagant costumes.
This day was originally a Celtic festival of Samhain, usually celebrated between October 31st and November 1st. People in Ireland believed that during these two days, spirits could roam free between the spirit world and reality. During this festival, people would dress up and build bonfires to ward off these evil spirits. In the eighth century, November first became All Saint’s Day, which upheld the traditional Samhain celebrations.
As time evolved, this holiday became less religious or spiritual and more of a national activity for children and adults in America. Throughout the 1950s, teens were known for being mischievous and causing disruption. This is when people in America started the tradition of Trick-Or-Treating on this day. Adults encouraged community activities like this to keep communication and connection among each other. People were almost always excited about dressing up, and this increased the popularity of more creative masks being manufactured in the 1960s. In the 70s and 80s, costumes became more gruesome as horror movies rose in popularity. This led to the classic vampire, zombie, and werewolf costumes that many people still love and wear today.
Building haunted houses and creating ultra-spooky attractions is more of a modern tradition that people of all ages can enjoy. Halloween is when most people want to be scared and voluntarily submit themselves to being terrified in various ways. These types of events are filled with people who are dedicated to helping others enjoy the frightful night.
Halloween can be celebrated in numerous different ways. What matters is that people can express their love for the holiday with others in safe, creative, and memorable ways.