A view into halloween´s origins and traditions
Its Spooky time, and you all know what it means: Halloween. Even this is not a Spanish tradition there are some connections with Spain on the origins of this celebration, so let’s see where Halloween comes from and those connections.
Origins
In case you don’t already know, Halloween comes from a pagan celebration, the Celtic festival of Samhain that celebrated the harvest at the end of the summer. And the date, November 1st comes from the eight century when pope Gregory III designated this day as the day to honor the saints. And you may ask you: What saints have to do with Halloween? Well, November 1st is All Saints Day, a tradition celebrated in many countries to honor those who departed. And here comes the amazing part: the word Halloween comes from “All Hallows Eve” which literally means the day before All Saints’ Day. One of them is a Christian tradition, the other one is pagan.
Tradition
Since both traditions have different origins, they also have different celebrations. While Halloween is festive, All Saints´ Day has more of a mourning vibe attach to it. In Spain, during All Saints´ Day the tradition its to visit your departed loved ones at the cemetery, bring them flowers and “spend” some time with them. But in Spain we also embraced the Halloween celebrations the night before, so each year more and more people celebrate it doing Halloween things that we will see next and where they come from.
The Pumpkin Carving
This tradition was originated in Ireland and comes from the myth of man call Stingy Jack (that’s why the carved pumpkins are called Jack-o´-Lanterns). Initially there were no pumpkins craved, they used turnips, that’s right turnips. The myth stays that Jack trapped the Devil and negotiated a deal to never go to hell. When Jack died, his soul was not wanted on Heaven neither, so he had to wander around earth as a gosht for eternity. And why a turnip? Well, the Devil gave jack a lighted turnip to light his way, and that’s where the tradition comes. With time people started to make scary faces on those turnips to scare evil, and now its just for fun.
Scary Costumes
This tradition comes back to the Celts, and the idea that, during the celebration of this festival the goshts that were around earth would come attracted by the celebrations. So basically, they were using camouflage. They dressed as goshts in order not to be identified by the real goshts and be able to enjoy the celebrations without being punished. Pretty clever if I may say. Nowadays we all know is not about how much you look like a gosht, is more about how good we can look dressing up as something scary.
Trick or treat
There are different theories about the origins of this tradition, but we are not going to bored you all with a long long text about it. We are just going to see them quickly.
1- The Celts used to leave food and other goods to the gosht at their doorways, so with time people started dressing up as goshts to get that food.
2- The Scottish during the Middle Ages used to collect food in exchange for prays during All Souls Day. The tradition dropped the religious part and stick to the going door to door part.
3- Comes from a German-American tradition: belsnickeling. During this Christmas tradition kids dress up and go to their neighbors for them to try to guess what they are dressed like. And the price is candy.
Ok ok we are not part of Halloween, but from Eurochange we just want to wish you a Happy Halloween and of course offer you our services of currency exchange. If you need to exchange your pounds to euro to purchase some candy, make sure you check our amazing rates. On the other hand, if you are from Spain and are using these holidays to take a trip and need to exchange euros to another currency, check all the currencies we can offer you and make sure you make your reservation in our website. I know we always tell you, but it is true, you will not find a better customer service out there. Happy Halloween!
