Thrilled to finally be celebrating Halloween! Everything from terrifying costumes to pumpkin carving to pumpkin-spiced everything is on the menu for this spooktacular October holiday. No matter how old you become, the Halloween season never gets old. Drinking alcoholic beverages while their children trick-or-treat is permitted. Have you ever wondered about Halloween’s origins and history? Learn more about the origins of Halloween so you may have a more enjoyable day on October 31st. This tradition dates back many centuries.   It also has witches and wizards, don’t you know? They’re not the only ones. Here’s how the Halloween tradition got its start. On the last day of October, Halloween is celebrated. All Hallows’ Eve was originally referred to as “hallowed evening” by the early Europeans. All Saints’ Day and All Hallows’ Eve celebrate the saints (hallows). Originally referred to as “Halloween,” “Halloween” was shortened. Halloween customs such as trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving, and dressing up as a spooky character go back centuries. Even so, the Celtic festival of Samhain (a Gaelic term pronounced “SAH-win”), a pagan religious celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, is the origin of the Halloween holiday. Pope Gregory III established November 1 as a day to commemorate the saints in the 8th century. Samhain’s rituals were soon incorporated into All Saints Day. In the days leading up to All Saints Day, the night before was referred to as All Hallows Eve or Halloween. It’s time to take a look back at the origins of some of the most well-known Halloween customs. Since its inception, St. Patrick’s Day has become a widely celebrated event around the globe. Due to religious restrictions, the original American colonists in New England were unable to observe the holiday, but it was widely observed in the southern colonies. By the 1800s, harvest festivities absorbed Halloween aspects, and Irish immigrants fleeing the catastrophic Potato Famine brought with them many Halloween customs that still exist today. In the early twentieth century, when Irish and Scottish communities reintroduced the Old World ritual of “guising,” in which a person would dress up in costume and tell a joke, recite a poem, or perform some other trick in return for food, trick-or-treating became popular in the United States. Throughout the 1950s, trick-or-treating for candy had become one of the most popular aspects of Halloween celebrations. Currently, Halloween is one of the most lucrative candy-selling holidays in the United States, with sales totaling more than $2.5 billion yearly. Companies like Collegeville Flag and Manufacturing Company helped costumes evolve into what they are now in the ’20s. This firm figured out that Halloween costumes don’t have to be frightening; they can be whatever you want them to be. H. Halpern Company had the similar concept around the same time and began looking for license rights for prominent cartoon characters at the time. H. Halpern Ben Cooper, the guy credited with fundamentally altering the game, was an early adopter of licensed characters. By 1960, he had become the king of Halloween, and all pop culture-related costumes were flying off the shelves owing to him.