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About 2,000 years ago, in areas that are now known as Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, there was a group of people known as the Celts who believed that on the night of October 31, the day before their new year (November 1), the border between the living and the dead became blurred and that the spirits of the dead roamed the earth.

As part of their beliefs, the Celts celebrated an ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain on October 31, the day known as All Hallows Eve. To commemorate the event, the Celts would light huge sacred bonfires where people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic gods. They also wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins. They would extinguish their fire sometime during the festival, and by the end of the festival, they would re-light it as it was believed to help protect them during the coming winter.

Halloween in the Americas was initially common in Maryland and the southern colonies. Eventually, as the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The early celebrations of Halloween were to honor harvest season, and were known as “play parties,” and neighbors shared stories of the dead, told each other’s fortunes, danced, and sang.

In the second half of the 19^th century, America was flooded with millions of Irish immigrants, which helped popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. By the late 1800s, there was a move to make Halloween into a holiday that focused more on community and neighborly get-togethers than on ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween became a household festivity that focused on games, foods, and costumes. Many themes of horror and grotesque were soon removed, thus Halloween began to lose most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the 20^th century. Between 1920 and 1950, the practice of trick-or-treating was revived as it was a relatively inexpensive way for a community to celebrate Halloween.

Today, the day of the Samhain Festival is popularly known as Halloween and is celebrated annually on October 31. It is a day when people commonly go trick-or-treating, carve jack-o-lanterns, have festive gatherings, wear costumes, and eat treats. It is estimated that Americans spend about $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second-largest commercial holiday after Christmas.