If you spend your October 31 carving pumpkins, watching scary movies, and dressing up for costume parties, you know just how much fun Halloween can be. But unless you’ve tried “booing” your neighbors, flying giant kites, or taking a trip on a haunted train, you haven’t fully experienced the holiday!
Learn more about these unique ways to celebrate with a look at Halloween traditions around the world. You’ll also discover how popular Halloween traditions came to be in our modern celebrations. (Who started the idea of trick-or-treating for candy, anyway?) Spice up your Halloween holiday with our carefully curated Halloween traditions.
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Common Halloween traditions in the US
Although today’s Halloween traditions seem set in stone (or gravestone, if you will), they’re customs from many different cultures and periods in history. Our list briefly explains how many American Halloween traditions began in Europe. Consider adding a few unique traditions to your celebration this year!
Carving jack-o’-lanterns
The origin of carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns comes from a combination of Irish Halloween traditions, 19th-century immigration, and a mythological trickster. According to Irish legend, Stingy Jack tricked the Devil on several occasions, which made him unsuitable to go to either heaven or hell after he died. Stingy Jack then roamed the Earth with only a carved turnip lit with a burning coal.
Halloween celebrants continued the tradition with carved turnips of their own, and later brought the practice of these “Jack of the Lanterns” (later, ‘jack-o’-lanterns’) with them when they immigrated to America. Pumpkins were easier to find than turnips in North American harvest (and probably easier to carve, too!), making this Halloween tradition a custom we still practice today!
Wearing Halloween costumes
One of the oldest Halloween traditions dates back to the ancient pagan festival of Samhain, pronounced SOW-in, which celebrated the Celtic New Year on the first evening of the year. Considered the historical origin of Halloween, Samhain (November 1st) was the day the Celts believed that the spirit world and the mortal world could merge, allowing spirits of their ancestors to cross over the barrier of the living.
However, not all of these spirits had good intentions, so the Celts would disguise themselves as witches or hobgoblins to scare the bad ghosts away. The custom kept going through many generational and cultural changes, and dressing in costumes is still a way to celebrate Halloween. Kids wear their costumes to school and for trick-or-treating, while adults mostly wear them to costume parties where there are often cash prizes awarded.
Trick-or-treating for candy
Modern trick-or-treating may be a way for kids to collect a pillowcase full of candy, but it started as a way for Irish farmers to collect food for a Samhain feast. In the 16th century, this practice became known as “guising” in Scotland and Ireland, in which children would dress as ghouls and collect treats from their neighbors.
Going door-to-door on Halloween didn’t become popular in the US until the 1920s, when the term “trick-or-treat” first appeared in print. It had a resurgence after the Great Depression and World War II, as sugar supplies replenished and candy companies could market their goods just for Halloween. New suburban neighborhoods also made it easier to go from house to house more quickly than visiting the neighbor’s farm, and despite the “trick” in “trick-or-treat,” the term became synonymous with free candy on Halloween.
Trunk-or-treating
Another modern Halloween tradition is trunk-or-treating, in which kids dress up in costumes and go to a community space or parking lot, rather than trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. Participants decorate the open trunks of their cars and give out candy to trunk-or-treaters, allowing them to safely collect candy in one place.
It may sound like trunk-or-treats are just for kids, but there’s more to it than going trunk to trunk! Some events include community dinners, Halloween carnivals, or other ways to celebrate together, no matter how old you are.
Playing Halloween tricks
That’s not to say that Halloween doesn’t have a few tricks! Halloween pranks and tricks began as part of the ancient Samhain customs to keep evil spirits away. They continued into the 18th-century British tradition of Mischief Night, a day of pranks and vandalism that takes place on October 30th.
Mischief Night followed other European Halloween traditions into America, where playfulness often devolved into vandalism and even violence in the 19th century. In most parts of the country, Halloween tricks have become much tamer and less destructive (though it may not feel that way if you’ve ever scraped eggs off your door).
Bobbing for apples
If you explained the idea of bobbing for apples to someone who had never heard of it before, it may sound like you were making up this Halloween tradition. You have to stick your face in a bowl of water and pick an apple up with your teeth? Who thought of that?
Like many other Halloween customs, apple bobbing dates back to Samhain, when Celts tied apples to tree branches and served fruit and nuts to appease the gods. The significance of autumn apples as symbols of fertility continued into European courting rituals, in which women would mark apples with their initials and hope their desired man would fish “their” apple out of a barrel with their teeth. Such a pairing would indicate that the couple was meant to be!
‘Booing’ the neighbors
A tradition doesn’t have to be old to be fun! A modern way to celebrate Halloween in your community is “Booing” your neighbors, where you prepare a basket or bag of treats with a “You’ve been Booed” note attached. They then place the note in their window to show they’ve already been booed, and they have a few days to “boo” another family (or families).
Booing your neighbors, also known as sending “scare packages,” is similar to trick-or-treating, but has more to do with giving treats than collecting them. It’s a nice way to reach out to people in your neighborhood, and maybe even make new friends before Halloween arrives.
Halloween traditions around the world
As you’ve seen above, many Halloween traditions originated in Europe but became much more popular once they reached the US. One reason for the holiday’s widespread popularity is the way Halloween is depicted in Western movies and TV shows, bringing this Americanized tradition into many parts of the world that never celebrated Halloween!
Discover which countries celebrate Halloween and how these traditions connect to the similarly timed All Saints’ Day (November 1st) and All Souls’ Day (November 2nd), holidays that date back to the Roman Empire and pay tribute to loved ones and ancestors who have passed away.
Costa Rica: Masquerade festivals
Based on the traditions of Spanish Carnivale and dressing up for Halloween in America, Día de la Mascarada (Masquerade Day) in Costa Rica takes place on October 31st. It includes a yearly parade filled with dancers in oversized papier-mâché heads, representing mythological creatures from Costa Rican history. These heads often take over a month to create, so participants get started well before October 31!
Germany: ‘Sweets or sour!’
Halloween has recently become more popular in Germany, especially in large cities like Berlin. Modeled after the American version of Halloween and trick-or-treating, a German Halloween has children calling “Süßes oder Saures” (Sweets or Sour) and carving a Kürbisköpfe (pumpkin head, referring to jack-o’-lanterns). While the tradition isn’t fun or welcome for everyone, it’s still a new holiday compared to more popular celebrations like Oktoberfest and Fasching (a German version of Mardi Gras).
Guatemala: Giant kites on All Saints’ Day
The Festival de Barriletes Gigantes (Festival of Giant Kites) combines Mayan traditions of kites as connections to the land of the dead and Spanish customs of Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints’ Day). This colorful custom encourages celebrants to hand-paint their enormous kites and fly them over the graves of their loved ones, sending messages of companionship for the living.
Ireland: Ancient customs and large festivals
If you had to determine what country started Halloween traditions, you’d have to say Ireland, the home of ancient Celts. And as most Halloween traditions can be traced back to Irish Halloween traditions, it’s not surprising that Halloween (or Oíche Shamhna, the traditional Irish name for Halloween) is a big deal in Ireland.
The Samhain Fire and Shadows Procession is a street spectacle that showcases firewalkers, local musicians, and stilt walkers to tell the ancient story of Samhain. Horror movie festivals and haunted city tours are just a few ways to spend a truly memorable Halloween in Ireland!
Italy: Religious remembrance and sweets from the dead
Although it’s sometimes known as the “Italian Halloween,” the festival of Ognissanti (All Saints’ Day) doesn’t have much in common with what you may know about Halloween. This November 1st holiday is a solemn occasion for Italians to remember Christian saints and loved ones who have passed away. However, like many countries around the world, Italy has begun to embrace the American version of Halloween, and you may hear children in costumes calling “Dolcetto o Scherzetto” (little sweet or little joke) as they go door-to-door in Rome or Milan.
Japan: Spooky trains and calling spirits home
Some traditional Japanese festivals, including the Obon festival that takes place in the summer, are similar to All Saints’ Day. Celebrants pay tribute to their ancestors and loved ones, light lanterns to guide their spirits, and serve delicious foods to share with their families. But the popularity of cosplay and American culture in parts of Japan makes Halloween a natural fit—and when you add shinkansen (bullet trains) to Halloween, you get Japanese Halloween trains! These spooky travel adventures range from haunted cars to zombie takeovers, giving you both a fright and a great story to share.
Mexico: Welcoming the spirits of ancestors
One of the most well-known international traditions during the Halloween season is Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a two-day tribute to the dead that dates back to Aztec traditions. It takes place November 1st and 2nd and is mainly celebrated in Mexico, though it’s also popular in other Latin American countries and in Mexican-American communities in the US.
People celebrating Dia de los Muertos put their loved ones’ pictures on an ofrenda (alter), decorate with Day of the Dead flowers like marigolds and chrysanthemums, and paint their faces like calaveras (skulls) to celebrate the time of year when beloved spirits can cross into the land of the living.
Philippines: Asking for souls and rice cakes
Though Western culture has made American Halloween traditions popular in the Philippines, the custom of Pangangaluwa (asking for souls) is still alive and well in some Filipino communities. On All Souls’ Day, neighbors dress up as wandering spirits in purgatory and visit homes in search of alms. They sing songs of lamentation as homeowners give them kakanin (rice cakes) and other festive foods in exchange for prayers for their own deceased loved ones.
Blend ancient practices and modern fun with Halloween traditions
The next time you see a lighted jack-o’-lantern or children dressed in Halloween costumes, you’ll know that the ancient Halloween traditions are still going strong—or at least, our modern versions of them! For more fascinating facts about fall, check out a guide to popular autumn superstitions, and find out how different cultures celebrate the autumn equinox around the world.
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