All you need to know about Halloween

Halloween is one of the most popular holidays celebrated in the United States. It, arguably, is the second most popular after Christmas. Its popularity shouldn't be considered that strange, as it's a day that allows children to get dressed up in costumes and receive all sorts of free candy and allows adults to act like children and get dressed up in costumes. Halloween is about a lot more than just costumes and candy. What most people don't know is that Halloween's roots go back thousands of years to an ancient Celtic festival. The ancient Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in what is now the United Kingdom, celebrated their new year on the first day of November. They called this Samhain, pronounced "sow-in". The Celts believed the boundary between the living and the dead was weakened the night before Samhain. As a result, ghosts of the dead were believed to have the ability to return to earth and cause trouble, as well as damage the food supplies of communities. Samhain was celebrated with the burning of crops and sacrificing of animals to the Celtic gods in bonfires built by priests known as Druids. The Celts wore costumes generally made from animal skins and heads, with the purpose of telling each other's fortunes. At the end of the celebration, the families would light their hearths with fire from the sacred bonfire as a balm of protection during the coming winter. The land of the Celts would fall under Roman rule for over 400 years, which resulted in Samhain being combined with other Roman festivals. One such festival was called Feralia, which was a day dedicated in late October to commemorate the passing of the dead. The second festival was dedicated to Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, whose symbol was an apple. By the year 800 A.D., the Christian influence had begun to spread across Celtic lands. It was around this time that Pope Boniface IV designated the first day of November as a time to honor saints and martyrs. This became known as All Saint's Day, and also All Hallows Day. Over time, the night before began to be known as All Hallows Eve, and eventually Halloween. In the year 1000, the church designated the second day of November as All Souls' Day, meant to honor the dead. The holiday would be celebrated in a style similar to Samhain, with bonfires, parades and costumes. The famous American version of the holiday began to materialize as various European immigrants arrived in America, bringing their own versions of the celebration with them. The variety of ethnic groups meshed together, along with those of Native Americans, and the first American celebrations were born during harvest time. In the second half of the 1800s, America saw a flood of immigrants, chief among them were Irish people fleeing their country's potato famine. The Irish and English tradition of Halloween involved dressing up in costumes and then going door-to-door asking for food or money. As this new way to celebrate the holiday began to take hold, the night became more about community than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. The holiday lost most of the superstitious and religious ties as it became more about parties for adults and children alike. Halloween eventually became a purely community-centered event. By the 1920s and '30s, entire towns held parades or threw parties in celebration. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the first recorded celebration of Halloween as having taken place in Anoka, Minnesota in 1921. By the baby boom of 1950s, however, the focus returned to the mass of children, and trick-or-treating would become the most popular form of celebration. The Web site http://www.holidayfacts.com estimates that anywhere between $2.5 and $6.9 billion is spent every year on Halloween, making it the second largest commercial holiday in the United States. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics located at http://usgovinfo.about.com, there are approximately 2,581 costume rental stores in the U.S. which deal with a lot of the 998 million pounds of pumpkins that are produced every year in the United States alone. Illinois leads pumpkin production in the country, with about 457 million pounds of pumpkins coming from the state each year. The estimated annual value for all of pumpkins produced in the country runs around $100 million, which is pocket change compared to the $19 billion in candy produced each year. This 19 billion dollars in candy equals out to about 25 pounds of candy consumed by each American every year, much of which is most likely eaten in the days after Halloween.