‘Tis the season to be creepy, and, in keeping with the spirit, I thought I’d bring to light some of the reasons behind why every supermarket in the country is going pumpkin-crazy.

First and foremost, “Halloween” comes from “Hallowed (or “holy/sacred”) evening”. Most people know this. It’s also common knowledge, going by the prevalence of horror-themed festivities, that “hallowed” carries some menacing undertones.

Halloween – or what was to become Halloween – began in ancient Ireland about 2,500 years ago. Known as Samhain (pronounced sow-en), it was actually the Celtic counterpart to the modern New Year, both in function and manner of celebration. It was believed that on Samhain Night, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the not-so-living were relaxed, and all manner of spirits walked the earth. This especially included the spirits of the previous years’ dead, who would attempt to regain their former corporeal existences by commandeering the bodies of the living. Unless, that is, the living made themselves look sufficiently un-commandeerable by dressing up as monsters and making a lot of noise.

Subsequently, the underlying point of the occasion wasn’t so much celebration as self-defense, similar to the modern strategy of acting deranged in deserted subway stations so whoever lives there won’t mess with you. This, supposedly, is the root of “dressing up”. While the custom’s efficacy against roving and destitute spirits is questionable, it has been demonstrably successful at traumatizing preadolescent trick-or-treaters.

So now we know the origin of Michael Jackson horror masks. But why candy? And what’s so frightening about pumpkins?

In researching this article, I came across a wide variety of proposed origins for trick or treating:

– One site stated that trick-or-treating started with people – not just children – going door to door and collecting small, rather cardboard-ish prayer cakes. They didn’t get these free – they first had to promise to say certain prayers on behalf of the cake-giver’s recently deceased loved ones. Try telling that to a kid today.

– Another story had it that trick-or-treating is a reenactment of Irish beggars requesting food from the rich. Refusing meant a lot more than getting one’s windows soaped, at least according to the beggars – the selfish would find themselves targeted by evil spirits.

– Wikipedia explained that “trick-or-treating” was first called “guising”, where the aforementioned trick was actually a performance rather than a prank. Children asking for candy were, as in the first account, expected to do something to deserve it – a typical “trick” might consist of a song, or a poem, or a joke. Needless to say, this tradition isn’t widely recognized any more. “No, Billy, you can’t have that Snickers bar until you recite all the U.S Presidents starting with Washington” would probably get an interesting reaction. Maybe even a lawsuit.

According to legend, pumpkins came a while later, stemming from the unfortunate experience of a man accounts refer to only as “Jack”. Jack was not known for his virtues – he was apparently a drink-loving lout who liked to play tricks on people. One day, he tricked the Devil, luring him into a tree and then trapping him there by placing crosses around the trunk. Jack only released the Devil after extracting a promise that he would never go to Hell.

After dying, Jack was deemed too loutish for Heaven and sent packing. On attempting to get into Hell, however, he was reminded that he had permanently cancelled his reservation, and found himself doomed to wander the mortal world forever. The Devil, out of pity – or, more likely, a twisted sense of irony – gave Jack a single ember from the flames of Hell, so he would at least have something to see by. Jack carved out a turnip to hold the ember, so it wouldn’t go out, and so it was that folks in old-time Ireland used to carve turnips for Halloween, sparing themselves the anguish of sifting through frigid pumpkin goo. Whether Jack managed to snag himself the body of an ineffectively costumed trick-or-treater is not known.

Irish immigrants to America, however, found that pumpkins were much more available than turnips were, and provided a larger carving area, so the custom changed. And just in time, too – who would worship something called The Great Turnip?

There’s much more to be said about the origins of Halloween. I didn’t even get into its uneasy relationship with fundamentalist Christianity, or Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), but I have to make sure my Michael Jackson mask fits before I go out tonight.

That’s it for this very special Chris Report on the history of Halloween. We now return you to your semi-regularly scheduled overseas hijinks.