Greetings Breezles,

Many people celebrate Halloween because it’s fun to dress up and ask for candy, but I wanted to know a little more about Halloween and why we celebrate it, so I scoured the web to find some random facts about the creepy holiday.   My 10 favorite facts about Halloween are below.

Do you have a fun fact about Halloween?

♥, E

1. Orange and Black are the traditional Halloween colors because orange represents the beginning of the fall harvest and black represents the death of summer.

2. Witches carry broomsticks because older woman who were convicted of witchcraft were usually very poor and could not afford horses, so they needed an aid of walking stick, which was sometimes replaced by a broomstick.

3.  Carving Jack O’ Lanterns originated in Scotland and Ireland.  People would carve scary faces into turnips or potatoes and would place them into windows or door ways to scare away evil spirits. 

4. The name Jack O’ Lantern stems from the story about Stingy Jack and the tricks he played on the Devil.  Soon after Stingy Jack died God would not allow such a person into Heaven and the Devil was still upset about being tricked by Jack, so he would not allow him into Hell.  Instead, he sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” and then, simply “Jack O’Lantern.”

5.  According to the National Confectioners Association almost three quarters of a trick or treater’s treasure is made up of chocolate

6. Halloween has had many names throughout the ages.  It has been called, All Hallows’ Eve, Witches Night, Lamswool Snap-Apple Night, Samhaim and Summer’s End. 

7.  Tootsie rolls were the first wrapped penny candy in America

8.  The fear of Halloween is called Samhainophobia.  Samhainophobia stems from the word,  Samhain, which was a ceremony held by the ancient Celts to celebrate the end of the harvest season.  Many believed  the dead roamed the earth on Samhain, so they would dress in costumes and leave treats on their front doors to appease the roaming spirits. 

9. Black cats were once believed to protect the powers of witches.

10. Halloween was a day to find your “soulmate”.  In Ireland some would celebrate the holiday by playing romantic fortune telling games that would predict who they were going to marry. Bobbing for apples is one of these games.  Bobbing for apples came about with the combination of the goddess of the fruit tree, Pomona and the pentagram (a Celtic fertility symbol). When an apple is sliced in half, the seeds form a pentagram-like shape and it is thought that the manifestation of such a symbol meant that the apple could be used to determine marriages during this time of year. During the annual celebration, young unmarried people try to bite into an apple floating in water or hanging from a string and the first person to bite into the apple would be the next one to be allowed to marry.