Halloween is an extremely popular holiday. Over 175 million Americans participated in at least one Halloween tradition, but have you ever wondered when the tradition of Halloween start?
Halloween may date back to over 2,000 years. According to historians, Samhain, a Celtic pagan festival, was a festival that symbolized the end of summer and the start of the years “darker half,” also known as fall and winter. This is believed to be the very start of Halloween. Historians think that the festival was to let humans see the world of gods, which resulted in lots of misbehavior. Some people would try to offer food to the gods, while others wore costumes and tried to convince people that they really were a god.
Halloween is on the 31st because Christianity made it a celebration before Saint’s Day to try and reform the festival from once being a pagan celebration. While the Christians were trying to reform the festival into a new holiday, the kept many of the traditions, such as dressing up in costumes.
People have shaped Halloween to what it is today, but these are the origins of one of the coolest holidays. Happy Halloween!
Halloween relates to engineering because people try to innovate and design new costumes. They also tried to create new ways to talk to the gods by making a festival.
For more information visit: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/31/us/halloween-2018-by-the-numbers/index.html or https://www.cnn.com/style/article/history-of-halloween-costumes/index.html
