We’ve talked about pumpkins. We’ve talked about trick or treat. But let’s talk about the name itself for a second, because Halloween sounds normal now, yet it’s actually a linguistic Frankenstein stitched together from old-world religion and sloppy English habits.
From “All Hallows’ Eve” to “Hallowe’en”
Originally, October 31 wasn’t “Halloween” at all. It was All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Hallows’ Day, when medieval Christians honored the saints and prayed for souls stuck in purgatory.
Over time, people got lazy, like they always do, and “Even” (as in “evening”) got clipped to “E’en.” So you had All Hallows’ E’en, which literally meant the evening before All Saints’ Day.
Then, by the 1700s, writers started smushing it together into one word: Hallowe’en. Fast-forward to America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and that extra apostrophe just looked fussy. We dropped it. Thus: Halloween. Simple, easy to spell, and very marketable.
So Did People Really Say “Good E’en”?
Kind of, but not like you think.
“E’en” was mostly a written contraction, not how regular folks actually talked. You’d see it in poems, sermons, and Scottish ballads… stuff like:
“Good e’en to ye, kind sir.”
But by the 1800s, in both Britain and America, nobody was walking around saying “Good e’en.” They said “Good evening” or the slangy “Evenin’.”
“E’en” hung around only in print, like a literary accent people couldn’t quite quit. When All Hallows’ E’en got shortened, that’s the only place “e’en” survived.
When It Finally Died Out
By the early 1900s, “e’en” was basically a fossil. It lived on only in the word Halloween; a linguistic time capsule hidden inside a holiday built on other time capsules.
Think of it like the silent “k” in knife: everyone left it there because it felt traditional, even if it made no sense anymore.
Samhain vs. Halloween — The Real Differences
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Everyone says “Halloween comes from the Celtic festival of Samhain,” and they’re right, kind of. But the modern holiday only borrows the bones of Samhain. The spirit of it changed completely.
What Samhain Actually Was:
- Celtic New Year: Marked the end of harvest and start of winter, AKA the “dark half” of the year.
- Spiritual Crossover: The veil between the living and the dead was thinnest.
- Offerings, Not Candy: Food and drink were left for ancestral spirits, no costumed kids out anywhere.
- Masks for Protection: Animal skins and disguises to fool spirits, not for fun.
- Massive Bonfires: Lit to cleanse and honor the gods of the harvest.
- Divination: Nuts, apples, and bones used for fortune telling about marriage and death.
Samhain was about survival, not sweets. It was ancient insurance against what the dark months might bring.
What Didn’t Make It “Across the Pond”
When Samhain customs crossed into Christian Europe and later America, a lot got lost, or softened:
- Sacrifice: Ritual animal offerings (and maybe human ones) didn’t survive Christianization.
- Spiritual Fear: Real dread of spirits became playful scares.
- Bonfires: Replaced with candles and porch lights.
- Divination: Became bobbing for apples and mirror games.
- Ancestor Worship: Morphed into costumes and candy parties.
What Stayed the Same
- Timing: End of harvest, start of winter.
- Theme: Death, darkness and the supernatural.
- Fire & Light: Bonfires became candles and lanterns.
- Masks: Disguise for protection became costumes for fun.
Wrap Up
So yeah, we traded sacred bonfires for Spirit Halloween fog machines and offerings to our ancestors for bite sized Snickers. But under all the plastic skulls and polyester capes, the bones of Samhain are still there and so is that fear of the dark, that celebration of the thin line between life and death.
Halloween didn’t erase Samhain. It just put on a mask, lit a pumpkin, and started knocking on doors instead of altars.