Entry · 5 min read
What is Halloween?
A short, plain-English entry on the holiday: where the name comes from, why the customs look the way they do, and what it is in 2026.
Definition
Halloween is a festival observed on 31 October, the evening before All Saints' Day. Its name is a contraction of All Hallows' Eve. In the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland it is marked by costume parties, carved pumpkins, trick-or-treating and horror-themed entertainment; elsewhere it is a growing commercial and social occasion rather than a public holiday.
- Date
- 31 October
- 2026
- Saturday
- Older root
- Samhain (Gaelic)
- Name
- All Hallows' Eve
Where it comes from
The short version: a Gaelic harvest festival at the start of winter, a Christian feast moved to 1 November in the eighth century, and a folk tradition of marking the night before it. The long version is contested by historians — the popular claim that Halloween is "purely" Samhain is as overstated as the claim that it is "purely" Christian. What is certain is that the name, the date and the customs arrived by different routes and merged late.
What survives into the modern holiday is the structure: a night when normal rules loosen, costumes are worn, and the boundary between the ordinary and the eerie is treated as thin. That structure is older than any single explanation of it.
The customs, and where each one came from
Trick-or-treating
Children in costume go door to door asking for sweets. The phrase appears in North American print in the 1920s; the practice became universal after the Second World War.
Jack-o'-lanterns
Carved turnips in Ireland became carved pumpkins in North America, where pumpkins were cheaper and easier to cut.
Costumes
The tradition borrows from guising in Scotland and Ireland and from masquerade. In the US it became a children's custom in the 1930s and an adult one again in the 1970s.
Bonfires
The Samhain bonfire survived into modern Halloween as a community event, though most suburban celebrations now use a fire pit or none at all.
Apple bobbing
A Victorian parlour game that outlived almost everything else from that era of Halloween parties.
Ghost stories
The belief that the boundary between worlds thins at the turn of the year is older than the name Halloween, and it is why the holiday is still a storytelling one.
Halloween in 2026
In practice, Halloween 2026 is three events wearing one date. There is a children's event — costumes, sweets, an early finish. There is an adult event — parties, bars, a costume that took weeks. And there is a home event — decorations, a bowl by the door, a film on in the background.
Most of this site is about the third one, and about the overlap between the first and second: how to build a look that works for a doorstep, a party and a photograph, without spending a seasonal-store budget on something you will wear once.
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Frequently asked questions
What does Halloween actually mean?
The name is a contraction of "All Hallows' Eve" — the evening before All Saints' Day on 1 November. The older roots are the Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of harvest and the start of winter.
Why do we carve pumpkins?
Irish households carved turnips to keep away wandering spirits. Immigrants to North America switched to pumpkins, which were larger, softer and far easier to carve.
Is Halloween a religious holiday?
It began as a religious observance and remains one for some Christians, while for most people in the US, UK and Ireland it is a secular community festival. Both readings are old; neither is a recent invention.
When is Halloween 2026?
Saturday, 31 October 2026. Trick-or-treating in most neighbourhoods runs from about 5:30 to 9 pm, with many cities scheduling events on the Friday or Saturday before.
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