The origins of Halloween - where did this holiday come from?

Have you ever wondered why we dress up in scary costumes, carve pumpkins or even why we celebrate Halloween at all? Well join me now for a very brief history of the holiday, and unsurprisingly some of it is quite grim. Let's find out more.

The origins of Halloween go back over 2000 years to the celts of the UK, Ireland and Northern France. They would celebrate their new year on November 1st to mark the end of the harvest, and the beginning of winter, a time of year associated with an increase in human deaths.

Their New Year's Eve, or Hallows eve was believed to be a time when the boundary between the worlds of the living and dead would blur. People gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to their deities, where they would wear costumes of animal heads and skins.

In Ireland, people would carve faces into turnips to keep evil souls at bay, and when many Irish emigrated to the US, this eventually became common with pumpkins. In the late 1800s, Americans borrowed from European traditions and went house to house asking for food or money, which eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition.