Halloween: What is it? How does it look in Carle Place?

By: Giulianna Canzoneri and Chloe Lee

Halloween originated in the eighth century by Pope Gregory lll. The tradition started with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. When people would light bonfires and wear costumes to scare off the ghosts. But, it wasn’t always celebrated on the 31st of October, it was actually celebrated on the 1st of November. 

According to history.com, “That day marked the end of summer and the harvest, the beginning of the dark, cold winter,  a time of the year where people often associate it with human death. On the night of October 31st, Celts believed that on the night before the New Year, they would welcome the ghosts that come back to Earth. Another tradition started the activities of Halloween. It was called Feralia and it was in early October. The second day was to celebrate the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. They say that the use of apples was the reason for how they started bobbing for apples. Halloween in America started in Maryland.” 

As history,com. recounts: the colonial Halloween festival was about telling ghost stories and getting into trouble. By the 19 hundreds, people were celebrating fall festivals, but not Halloween yet. In the second half of the 19 hundreds, America had a lot of immigrants which were Irish and helped them get into the spirit of Halloween. Trick-or-treating was first asking people for money or candy but now all we get it candy. Young women used to believe that they can play pranks on their future husbands with mirrors, candy apples and yarn. By the 1950s, families would avoid getting tricked by giving kids candy. Halloween was growing and kept on growing. People spent 6 billion dollars on everything, and now Halloween is the second biggest holiday after Christmas.

The first horror movie was made in 1978 called Halloween. But, when that movie got so popular some people made a sequel and something like it, like Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and Friday the 13th. Now, on the more family-friendly route, they made movies like: Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice. These were all made for one movie that blew up, and that is amazing. 

Have you ever wondered how trick-or-treating started? It started with Soul Cakes. Soul Cakes are pastries that bakeries would give to people who were poor, but in return they had to promise to pray for their dead loved ones. That is how trick or treating started. The soul cakes were started when the Church taught the lesson that instead of leaving food and drinks by their loved one’s grave, they would give the poor soul cakes. 

Halloween at Carle Place is truly a great experience. Of course this year was different due to the Covid-19 rules and virtual teaching. So, we decided to move our Spirit Week to when everyone was back at school. The students really showed spirit as they came to school on Friday November 6th wearing their creative costumes. It was a great experience for our 7th graders who graduated from Rushmore last year. Yes, we were all disappointed that we couldn’t celebrate on the Friday before Halloween, but we still got good costumes. Some teachers dressed up in costumes on their own, and the students shared laughs when their teachers showed off their fantastic costumes. And we had a variety of costumes and colors throughout the school, some superheroes, and some fuzzy animals to go along with that. The students at Carle Place had great costumes (and lots of candy) to celebrate Halloween 2.o. Check out the pictures above to see what some of our CP students and teachers dressed up as!