Halloween & Salem: How'd We Get Here?

By:  Rachael Kuper '20

The autumn leaves are falling; you’ve broken out your coziest sweater and started ordering pumpkin spice everything. It’s Halloween again and Salem is busy, bustling, and bright.

Also it’s crowded, so very crowded.

How did our Salem become this major Halloween city, with the perks and pains?

As you may remember from childhood stories, Halloween is actually an old, old holiday. 2,000 years ago the Celtic festival of Samhain celebrated and mourned the end of summer, the end of harvest time. The incoming dark, cold winter was culturally tied to death. Celtic villages believed the transitory day was when ghosts returned to earth and predicted their future. Celts honored their new year with bonfires, costumes, and fortune telling.

When the Roman Empire rose to power around 43 A.D., they essentially co-opted Samhain and combined it with their holidays: Feralia, which commemorated dead relatives, and Pomona, the holiday for the goddess of fruit and wine. Then in 609 A.D., the Pope Boniface IV, established a new holiday called All Martyrs Day to celebrate saints and martyrs.

By 1000 A.D. November 2nd was made All Soul’s Day by the church, a not so subtle attempt to replace Samhain. The festivities also included bonfires, parades, and costumes. The holiday gained a nick-name: All-Hallows. Eventually the night before was branded All-Hallows Eve, and then Halloween.

Once Halloween became established in the U.S., it became something new again. “Trick-or-treating,” community events, and bobbing for apples evolved as generations passed.

And in Salem, Massachusetts Halloween traditions grew too.

Haunted Happenings is the official title for the City of Salem Halloween spectacle. It began in 1982, lasting only one weekend, and drew in about 50,000 guests. In the thirty-seven years since its start, Haunted Happenings has expanded to a month long celebration with as many and 250,000 people on Halloween weekend. Activities include costume contests, scary movie showings, ghost tours, psychic readings, food trucks, a small carnival, and much more!

But for students at SSU, Halloween time in Salem will always be more than the festivities and fun, it’s also the time of incessant traffic.