Perhaps when you first dressed up as a ghost and went round the houses asking for sweets you thought to also ask what the meaning of Halloween was? In case, like me, you didn't, I can share for you that Halloween is a smush together — or portmanteau — of hallow, of old English origin meaning Saint, and e'en, a contraction of the Scots word even meaning eve. So it's really the night before All Hallows or All Saints' Day on the 1st of November when Christians celebrate the lives of past Saints and martyrs. It's also part of the season of events called Allhallowtide including All Souls' Day on the 2nd of November and sometimes days beyond.

The other Halloween traditions come from a mix of sources over hundreds of years that are both complex and somewhat disputed. I did like that the Jack O'lantern, before transferring itself to a pumpkin in the US, was originally carved out of turnips. And I also read that a mighty one quarter of candy sold in the US is sold for Halloween.

Some of the better, sources, explaining the origins of Halloween.

Halloween

I’d idly wondered all my life, but never bothered to look it up. Turns out there doesn’t seem to be one clear accepted origin of Boxing Day, but the general premise goes that on or before Christmas Day people would give gifts to people of the same social level or class. On what used to be the first weekday after Christmas, but is now the day after Christmas Day, upper social classes would, in some form, give gifts to those in lower classes — often a Christmas box. This might have been because they had worked for them during the year in one way or another, like giving a Christmas tip to the milkman, or simply as a gift, or because the lower classes were too busy serving the upper classes on Christmas Day and so couldn’t do the Christmas thing properly themselves.

As is often the case, the Snopes article about Boxing Day, has a useful synthesis.

Origins of Boxing Day

Sometimes see the good in what you have come to resent.

Sketchplanations tagged with holiday