Halloween comes from older autumn traditions, mainly the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter. Over centuries, those customs mixed with Christian holidays and later with American community celebrations. The pumpkin carving we do today grew out of an older Irish practice of carving turnips, and it became a pumpkin tradition only after families moved to North America.
If you want the long version, with old postcards and folklore, The Hollow Lantern keeps a plain-English guide to samhain to halloween history. For a family evening, the short version below is enough to answer the questions your kids will ask while the candles are lit.
Where does Halloween come from and what was celebrated before it?
Before Halloween, people in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man celebrated Samhain, a festival that fell around the first of November in the old calendar. It marked the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. Cattle came down from summer pastures. Households brought in the harvest, settled debts and prepared for winter.
Samhain was not a single night of fright. It was a threshold, a point where one season ended and another began. Folklore held that the boundary between the everyday world and the otherworld grew thin at that time. People left out food, lit fires and took care with strangers and travellers. Some of those habits look familiar today: lighting a lantern, sharing food, telling stories after dark.
When Christianity spread, the church set All Saints' Day on 1 November and All Hallows' Eve on 31 October. The old customs did not vanish. They blended. In Ireland and Scotland, people went door to door for food and drink in exchange for songs or prayers, a practice that fed into modern trick-or-treating. In the 19th century, Irish and Scottish families brought these habits to North America, where they met autumn harvest parties, pranks and community gatherings. By the early 20th century, Halloween had become a neighbourhood evening, and by the 1950s it had settled into the child-friendly door-to-door event many families know now.
So the answer is simple: Halloween comes from Samhain, from the Christian feast of All Hallows, and from the ways immigrants and neighbours reshaped both into a shared autumn night.
What exactly was Samhain?
Samhain was a Gaelic festival, not a horror show. The name comes from Old Irish and is usually linked to the idea of summer's end. It was one of four seasonal turning points in the Gaelic year, along with Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh. Each one marked a shift in farming life, and Samhain marked the shift into winter.
What did people actually do?
- They brought animals in from distant grazing and chose which ones to keep through winter.
- They gathered the last of the harvest and stored grain, nuts and preserved food.
- They lit bonfires, sometimes on hilltops, and used fire as protection and as a gathering point.
- They shared food and drink, and in some places left a portion out for ancestors or for visitors from the other world.
- They told stories, played games and practised small acts of divination, especially about marriage and the year ahead.
It is worth separating fact from later invention. We do not have a written record from the people who first kept Samhain. What we know comes from medieval Irish and Welsh texts, from later folklore collected in the 18th and 19th centuries, and from archaeology of seasonal gatherings. Some popular claims, such as a fixed druid ceremony or a single official date, are modern retellings. The honest version is that Samhain was a real seasonal festival with local variations, and its meaning shifted over a thousand years.
For families, the useful part is this: Samhain was about preparing for winter, marking a change, and staying close to home and neighbours. That is a calm idea to share with children, and it explains why Halloween feels like an autumn threshold rather than a random scary night.
Why do we carve pumpkins for Halloween?
The pumpkin is an American substitute for a much older vegetable: the turnip. In Ireland and Scotland, people carved turnips, beets and sometimes potatoes into lanterns. They hollowed them out, cut a simple face, and placed a candle or a piece of burning turf inside. These lanterns were carried on dark roads or set near a door. They were linked to the story of a man often called Stingy Jack, who was said to wander with a hollowed turnip and a coal, and to the general idea of a light that keeps unfriendly things away.
When families from Ireland and Scotland settled in North America, they found pumpkins in abundance. Pumpkins are larger, softer and easier to hollow, and they were already part of the autumn harvest. By the late 19th century, American magazines and newspapers were showing carved pumpkins as a Halloween decoration. The turnip lantern became the jack-o'-lantern, and the pumpkin became the shape of the holiday.
A few practical notes for carving with children:
- Choose a pumpkin that feels heavy for its size and has a dry, firm stem.
- Cut the lid with a slight notch so it sits back in the right place.
- Scoop the inside clean, down to the firm flesh, so the walls do not rot quickly.
- Use a small serrated knife or a pumpkin saw, and let an adult do the cutting.
- Rub the cut edges with a little petroleum jelly to slow drying.
- Keep the carved pumpkin in a cool spot, and bring it inside overnight if frost is not expected.
A carved pumpkin usually lasts three to seven days outdoors, depending on temperature and rain. If you want it to last longer, carve it closer to the evening you need it.
How did old autumn customs become today's Halloween?
The path from Samhain to modern Halloween runs through several changes, and none of them happened all at once.
First, the church calendar placed All Hallows' Eve on 31 October. That gave the night a name and a fixed date. Second, rural customs of sharing food and going door to door survived in Ireland and Scotland, often called guising or souling. Third, mass migration in the 19th century carried those customs to the United States and Canada. Fourth, towns and schools in the early 20th century turned Halloween into a community event with parties, costumes and safe indoor games. Fifth, the postwar suburbs made door-to-door trick-or-treating the standard, and the holiday became a children's evening rather than an adult one.
Decorations followed the same pattern. Old paper cutouts, crepe paper and printed postcards from the early 1900s show witches, black cats, owls, moons and pumpkins. Those images came from folklore, from harvest imagery and from the printing industry of the time. Collectors still look for them today, and they are a good way to show children that Halloween has a paper trail, not just a plastic one.
What can families take from the folklore?
The folklore is not a script. It is a set of habits that people used to mark a change of season: light a fire, share food, tell a story, keep an eye on the dark. You can use the same shape for your own October evening.
- Tell one short story about Samhain and one about the turnip lantern. Two minutes each is enough.
- Make a small lantern from a turnip or a beet, and compare it with the pumpkin on the step.
- Cook something from the harvest: soup, apples, nuts, oatcakes.
- Walk the street once before dark and once after, and talk about what changes.
- Keep the scary parts mild for younger children, and let older ones ask the questions.
If your family likes the history, the folklore and the old decorations, there is plenty to read. If you only want a calm, well-lit evening with a carved pumpkin and a bowl of sweets, that is a real Halloween too. The old festival was about getting ready for winter together. That part still works.
If your child wants to keep painting after the costumes are packed away, move from paper crafts to paint. Learning watercolor washes gives you a calm indoor project for grey afternoons, and it uses supplies you likely already own. Start with one flat wash on damp paper, let it dry, then add a second layer for depth. If the colors turn muddy, stop and let the paper dry before adding more. You can find the full method at watercolor washes.