Americans spent $490 million on costumes for their pets in 2019-more than double what they spent in 2010.Ĭolonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.ĭid you know? More people are buying costumes for their pets. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.Īs the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge.

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. READ MORE: How the Early Catholic Church Christianized Halloween Halloween Comes to America The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.Īll Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils.

In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.īy the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites.

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church.

The long dark how to cook