The custom of Halloween began in Ireland and is still celebrated a lot as is done in the United States. Children get all dressed up in their Halloween coustumes and go “trick or treating” on the eve of Halloween. There is a great deal of entertaining a festivity that swirls around Halloween. From bon fires to parties with everyone in their Halloween coustumes.
After “trick or treating” people attend parties with friends and family and enjoy playing games such as bobbing for apples, Halloween coustumes contest, treasure hunts, etc. An Irish game is played with cards being laid face down on a table with coins or candy underneath. When a card is chosen and the candy or coins found underneath is the prize.
Bambrack is a version of fruit cake that is eaten on Halloween. It can be bought in the stores or homemade. A muslin-wrapped treat is baked in the fruit cake and is said to predict the eaters fortune. If a ring is found the person is to be married soon. A prosperous you predicted if a piece of straw is found.
Halloween customes made their way to America with the European immigrants. Because of strict protestant beliefs that were prevalent in the early days of New England the celebration of Halloween was not as popular there in Colonial times as it was in Maryland and the South.
As the different ethnic groups came to America and shared their customs related to Halloween a new American version of the holiday took shape.
The first Halloween celebrations included celebrations of the harvest, telling fortunes and stories of the dead. There was much singing and dancing and telling of ghost stories.
Halloween began to be celebrated most everywhere in the country by the second half of the 19th century as America was the chosen new country of the Irish fleeing the harsh economy of the Irish potato famine in 1846.
Americans began taking ideas from the English and Irish and began to dress up in what we now think of as Halloween coustumes and go house to house asking for treats which we now know as the “trick or treat” tradition.
By the late 1800s there was an effort to transform Halloween into a holiday more about friendly get togethers with neighbors and friends and Halloween coustumes than about ghosts and witchcraft.
Halloween, with its fun, food and drink and celebrated by wearing the Halloween coustume of choice, has become America’s second largest commercial holiday.
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About the Author:
Karen Wilson writes on variety of selected subjects involving family life.
Halloween Coustumes
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