Halloween is a holiday that is celebrated on the last day of October every year. Halloween in 2020 will fall on Saturday the 31st. This tradition hails from the Celtic festival of Samhain, where the participants would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. This time of year, marked the end of summer and end of the harvest season and the Celts knew from experience that the long dark winter that lied ahead brought sickness and death. And so, the celebrated the festival of Samhain to ward off the ghosts that they believed brought them demise in the winter. Overtime the tradition meshed with other culture’s traditions like that of the Romans when they conquered Celtic land in 43 A.D.
The tradition of Halloween in America was not what it is today. The New England region did not celebrate Halloween due to their protestant beliefs, while regions in the South like Maryland the tradition was common. By middle 19th century the North was flooded with Irish immigrants that were fleeing the Irish potato famine, they helped popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally by borrowing from European tradition of dressing up in costumes and going house to house asking for food and money.
Present day, Halloween is the second biggest commercial holiday in America only behind Christmas, with over $6 billion spent annually.