It’s the devil’s birthday.
Many people, especially Evangelical Christians, view Halloween as a satanic holiday or the devil’s birthday. This is just simply not true. Halloween dates back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which celebrated the end of summer. During that time, they thought the ghosts of the dead could come back to earth. The Celts wanted the ‘spirits’ to come because they believed it helped the Druids make predictions about the future. They heavily relied on the Druids and their predictions during the winter months to guide them. After the Romans conquered a majority of Celtic land, they attempted to replace Samhain with a church-sanctioned holiday, All Souls’ Day a.k.a. All Saints Day. All Saints Day was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas. Since All Saints Day was celebrated very similarly to Samhain, it was celebrated on Samhain but called All Hallows Eve, which became Halloween. It had nothing to do with the devil, it was just a Celtic holiday to help their druids make predictions and help lead them through the winter.
Trick or Treating has always been a part of Halloween.
Trick or Treating hasn’t always been a part of Halloween. It first started during the Middle Ages, when children or poor adults would go door to door begging for food in exchange for songs or prayers said for the dead. After the Middle Ages, the practice disappeared for a while until the 1920s and 30s. It became popular in the 1920s and 30s because of the outbreak of rowdy and sometimes violent Halloween pranks. The Great Depression only made the issue worse, so communities put it upon themselves to organize trick or treating to keep kids out of trouble. The practice paused for a while during WWII, but saw its greatest burst in popularity after that, when the sugar rations were lifted. Because people now had access to as much sugar as they could buy, it became a widespread holiday.
People poison halloween candy.
Many people fear that their kids Halloween candy is poisoned or tampered with in other ways. That is not true. The only documented case of a child dying from eating Halloween candy was Timothy O’Bryan, when he ate a poisoned Pixy Stix. However, this was the work of his deranged father, who took out a large life insurance policy on him that he tried to collect. Other than that, there have been no cases of children being poisoned. The slightly more common occurrence was the tampering of candy with razor blades or needles. This is still highly unlikely, and have caused very minimal damage to its victims. There have only been 80 reports of sharp objects in food since 1959. There was one person, James Joseph Smith of Minneapolis, who put needles in Snickers bars, but he was caught and subsequently charged with adultering a substance with intent to cause death, harm, or illness. There was also one case in 2000 about children who received Snickers wrappers stuffed with marijuana. It happened completely by accident, the man who gave them outworked at a dead letter office, and decided to take a bag of Snickers and give them out to trick or treaters. It turned out that the Snickers were a poorly designed attempt to smuggle marijuana through the mail.
In conclusion, Halloween isn’t all that you think it is. It isn’t the devil’s birthday, trick or treating hasn’t always been a part of Halloween, and your candy isn’t unsafe as you think it is. But remember, be safe and responsible this Halloween!
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