Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated Halloween on November 1.Halloween used to mark the end of summer and the beginning of the cold winter nights. This day was often associated with human death. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic 
deities. Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. People would leave food and wine on their doorsteps for the ghosts. The US spends about 6 billion on costumes and candy a year. The celebration of Halloween was very limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies then in the northern colonies.
The first celebrations included “play parties,” public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing together. Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. Here are a couple of foods associated with Halloween such as Barmbrack (Ireland), Bonfire toffee (Great Britain), Candy apples/toffee apples (Great Britain and Ireland), Candy apples, Candy corn, candy pumpkins (North America), Monkey nuts (peanuts in their shells) (Scotland and Ireland), Caramel apples, Caramel corn Colcannon (Ireland), Cookies shaped in Halloween themes, Halloween cake, Novelty candy shaped like skulls, pumpkins, bats, worms, etc. Pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, Popcorn, Pound cake, Ramekins filled with pumpkin pureé, Roasted pumpkin seeds, Roasted sweet corn, Soul cakes and so much more. So in the end Halloween is a wonderful holiday and has been around for ages.
Work Cited
History.com Staff. “History of Halloween.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 07 Sept. 2016.