History of Halloween:

• When and where did Halloween start?  This is a good question, because its exact origins are unconfirmed.  However, there are three solid connections to the beginning of Halloween.
• Connection #1:  Some people are convinced that Halloween developed from the ancient Roman feast of Pomona (goddess of fruits and seeds).
• Connection #2:  Others believe Halloween developed from another ancient Roman holiday known as Parentalia, which was a festival of the dead.
• Connection #3:  The most accurate link probably goes back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain or Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in).  The name comes from the Old Irish language and means "Summer's end".  A similar festival held by the ancient Britons was known as Calan Gaeaf (pronounced Kol-on ga-av).
• Samhain celebrated the end of the "lighter half" of the year and the beginning of the "darker half".  It's sometimes thought of as the Celtic "New Year".
• The ancient Celts believed that on Samhain, the border between our world and the "Otherworld" became thin, allowing spirits both harmless and harmful to pass through.  Loved ones were welcomed back while bad spirits were warded off.  To ward off evil spirits, scary costumes and masks were worn.  The idea was that if you convinced bad spirits that you were also a bad spirit, they would leave you alone.
  
• In Scotland, spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white who either masked, veiled, or blackened their faces.  This all-white look is probably what developed our common-held belief that ghosts are white.
• Samhain was also a time to stock up on food for the upcoming Winter.  This included harvest, and the slaughter of livestock.
• Bonfires also played a big part in the festivities of Samhain, as they were needed to cook meat and dispose of the bones of animals.  Today, fire is more associated with Halloween than with any other holiday.
• The name of Halloween has its roots in the Old English era, but really didn't come about until the 16th century.
• "All Hallows" comes from Old English.  "All-Hallows-Even" or "All-Hallows-Eve", a name for the night before "All Hallows", is believed to have originated in the year 1556.  A Scottish variant of this name was "Halloween".  This all happened during the period known as Reformation.
• Many of the Halloween traditions we know today have their roots in Old English and the 16th century Reformation.
• Halloween transformed largely from a religious holiday to a secular (non-religious) holiday in the years following Reformation.
• Christian attitudes towards Halloween today are quite varied.  The Anglican Church emphasizes the religious aspect of "All Saints' Day", as they prefer to call it.  Other Protestants celebrate the day as "Reformation Day", a way to celebrate the Protestant Reformation.  Most Christians, however, see no connection of the holiday to Christianity.
• Halloween is not celebrated in all countries of the world, and those that do celebrate the holiday largely take their influence from how Americans celebrate the day.

Jack O'Lanterns:

• The practice of making Jack O'Lanterns started in ancient Celtic days.  England, Ireland, Scotland...anywhere the people spoke Celtic...made candle lanterns by carving turnips, NOT PUMPKINS!  Why?  It was viewed as a way to commemorate those whose souls were in purgatory.  These scary looking turnips were put in the windows of Celtic homes to ward off evil spirits.
• How did pumpkins become Jack O'Lanterns?  Why the switch?  Carving pumpkins to make Jack O'Lanterns started in North America.  Pumpkins were more readily available than turnips, and much larger.  They were much better for carving.  Pumpkins as Jack O'Lanterns started around the middle 1800s.  At first, the faces were typically made scary.  As religious attitudes toward the holiday greatly relaxed, Jack O'Lanterns started taking on funny faces.  An interesting and far more recent development, is the practice of carving very detailed, ornate illustrations on pumpkins, rather than faces.  Things like nature scenes, and other pictures, have made appearances on Jack O'Lanterns.  Some people have probably done this for far longer than we think, but the fad really caught on in the 1980s-90s.

Imagery of Halloween:

• Black and orange have become the chief colors of Halloween.  Why?  It's believed that most people associated these colors with the holiday due to the color of darkness (black) and the color of fire, Autumn leaves, or pumpkins (orange).
• Anything related to harvest time became associated with Halloween.  This includes things like corn husks, Indian corn, pumpkins, scarecrows, and so on.
• Any kind of scary animal, or animal tied to scary superstition, became associated with Halloween.  This includes things like bats, black cats, spiders, wolves (leading into werewolves) or anything else frightening.
• Horror stories of the 19th century, and horror films of the 20th century, added a pop-culture "monster" touch to the holiday.  Dracula and all vampires, Frankenstein, werewolves, even mummies and the Invisible Man, were all added to ancient standards like devils, ghosts, goblins, skeletons, and witches.  The Invisible Man has probably become a classic Halloween fixture due to the fact that he's a lot like a ghost.
• Themes of death and evil, magic and the occult, and all manners of monsters from ancient mythology to modern pop-culture have been thrown into the mix of Halloween.