Why Is Halloween An American Culture

Did you ever wonder why it is an American tradition to dress up as monsters or TV characters for Halloween? Well, that is because it was not America’s tradition to begin with, as well as many other things in America. Many things that people believe are American culture, actually came from another culture that has diffused throughout time. Halloween is a prime example of American culture originating from another, as stated in the article History of Halloween, by Joshua J. Mark, “Halloween traditions in the West date back thousands of years to the festival of Samhain.” Halloween originally came from a festival, where they would celebrate and watch the sunset on October 31 to November 1 to honor god, as well as to mark the close harvest season

As Mark continues he says“The rituals of Samhain arrived in the United States less than a century later with the displacement of the Irish in 1845-1849, during the potato famine.” During the years 1845-1849, the rituals of Samhain arrived in America, and the holiday grew into its own after with the traditions that people have learned from other cultures. In the article Halloween: Origins and Current Traditions, the author Heather Thomas states, “However, since the American Colonies were influenced by a variety of cultures, Halloween traditions began to change.” While Halloween was inspired by the festival of Samhain and British colonists, many other cultures and holidays were a part of it, from what the author believes to be because of many immigrants that have come to America, and taught their traditions to other

Thomas goes on and says, “The traditional Halloween colors of black and orange also traces back to the Celtic festival of Samhain. For the Celts, black represented the “death” of summer while the orange symbolized the autumn harvest season.” When you go to a Halloween party, you expect to see the colors black and orange everywhere, but it may be for a different reason to what those colors meant to people in Samhain. The author goes on to write, “As part of Samhain, Celts lit large bonfires, which attracted insects, which in turn, attracted bats. Soon spotting bats became connected with the festival.” If I told you to think of the first animal that pops up in your head to represent Halloween, you would most likely think of a bat, and the reason for that is because of Samhain and their