by Jonathan Davi<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s that time of year again, and everyone is excited for the spooky season and Halloween. However, did you know that for many years Halloween was not intended to be as spooky and commercialized as it is today? Let\u2019s take a look at how Halloween became so spooky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Halloween started around 2,000 years ago as All Saints Day in European countries. The purpose of this day was to connect the living and the dead, as people believed on October 31st the boundary to the afterlife opened allowing ghosts to pass through. To celebrate, people would wear costumes and light bonfires to honor this tradition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This tradition stayed within Europe until the Irish Potato Famine in the mid 1800’s when many Irish people (Ireland was where this tradition at the time was mostly celebrated) migrated to America and began spreading this tradition across the U.S. and other parts of the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During this time, Halloween traditions such as Jack-O-Lanterns came into existence. Vegetables such as turnips, potatoes, and beets were used in Ireland, but pumpkins were used in America. People started placing candles in carved out pumpkins and a halloween tradition was born. All Saints Day changed to what we now know as Halloween.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1930s, teenagers would vandalize public property as a form of celebration for this “newish” holiday. This tradition was unacceptable and needed to be changed. So, over time, an idea developed for people to walk around their towns and leave candy on their doorsteps for people to take. This became known as \u201cTrick-or-Treating.\u201d However, trick or treating was not widely accepted as the new way to celebrate Halloween until the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even during the 1930s and 1950s Halloween still wasn\u2019t really mainstream or as “spooky” as it is today. As a matter of fact, Halloween is still not considered a national holiday in current times. However, it is definitely more mainstream than it was seventy years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of the credit to making Halloween as mainstream as it is today goes to the late songwriter and comedian Bobby \u201cBoris\u201d Pickett. Pickett released what is still known as \u201cThe Song Of Halloween\u201d called the \u201cMonster Mash\u201d in the 1950’s. This song was meant to put a funny, spooky twist on Halloween and it did just that. Halloween became a spooky holiday with people starting to dress up in scarier costumes. More horror movies and haunted attractions began to grow in popularity in the 70’s and 80’s, and Halloween became the mainstream holiday that we know today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very interesting to look back on the history of this unique spooky holiday. I bet you never knew that Halloween was not intended to be scary when it first started. Happy Halloween!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Jonathan Davi It’s that time of year again, and everyone is excited for the spooky season and Halloween. However, did you know that for many years Halloween was not intended to be as spooky and commercialized as it is today? Let\u2019s take a look at how Halloween became so spooky. Halloween started around 2,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image.png?fit=740%2C493&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcv2KD-Ij","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2751,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions\/2751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siderpress.oceansideschools.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}