Halloween Quiz
The first jack-o'-lanterns were not pumpkins at all.
A Halloween quiz with answers on where the customs come from: lanterns, costumes, games and a famous night on the radio. Nothing gory, just the folklore and history behind 31 October.
Did you know?
- An Irish folk tale explains the carved lantern through a man called Stingy Jack, who tricked his way out of every debt. Turned away from both heaven and hell after his death, he was left to wander in the dark with only a glowing coal inside a hollowed-out root.
- In 1950 a group of children in Philadelphia went from door to door on Halloween collecting coins for children overseas instead of sweets, and raised seventeen dollars. The idea became the 'Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF' campaign, which has since collected many millions with its small orange boxes.
- The objects baked into an Irish barmbrack are a form of fortune-telling. Whoever finds the ring in their slice will supposedly marry within the year, and a coin promises wealth. Shop-bought loaves in Ireland are still sold with a ring inside in the weeks before Halloween.
How Halloween customs travelled and changed
Halloween falls on 31 October. Many of its customs can be traced to Ireland, Scotland and other parts of the British Isles, where the end of October marked the close of the farming year. In the nineteenth century large numbers of Irish and Scottish emigrants carried these traditions across the Atlantic. There they mixed with local habits, grew into neighbourhood parties and parades, and eventually spread back around the world through films and television.
Costumes and doorsteps
Dressing up and calling at houses is far older than the modern holiday. In parts of medieval Britain people went from door to door at this time of year asking for small cakes, and performers in masks, known as mummers, acted short plays in return for food. The phrase now shouted on doorsteps is quite recent: its earliest known appearances in print come from Canadian newspapers of the 1920s. Ready-made costumes in boxes went on sale in the 1930s, replacing outfits made at home from old sheets and clothes.
Symbols of the night
The colours associated with Halloween are usually explained simply: orange for autumn leaves, harvest and firelight, black for the long nights. Bats may have joined the picture because the bonfires lit at this season attracted insects, which in turn attracted bats. Owls, spiders and black cats were all linked in older European folklore with night and with luck, good or bad, and so they found their way onto cards and decorations from the early twentieth century.
One date, many customs
Different countries mark the date in their own way. In Ireland a fruit loaf called barmbrack is baked with small objects inside. Japan has held large costume parades since the late 1990s, with adults rather than children at the centre. Mexico's Day of the Dead, on 1 and 2 November, is a separate tradition with its own origins, in which families remember relatives with flowers, food and decorated altars, although the two are often confused abroad.