Students are dressed up, kids are carving pumpkins and scary movies suddenly seem to be on every channel. Halloween is arriving in 24 hours and with it comes traditions whose origins and meanings have long been washed away by the tides of time.

The entire meaning of the holiday is lost on some people.

“I have no idea,” junior Tim Kelly said, about the origins of Halloween. “I’d say it’s based off some religion way back in the day.”

The holiday actually does have religious origins and, like many of America’s traditions, was inherited from European customs.

“One of the bishops of Rome declared November the First as a day to remember the dead, and they were competing with pagan end of the harvest festivals,” said anthropology professor Jim Green. “They co-opted those festivals and turned them to honoring saints.”

The holiday arrived in the United States in bits and pieces and it is only within the last century that Halloween has taken the form we know it in today. Pumpkins, skeletons, ghosts, costumes and the phrase “trick or treat” all have diverse roots that have come to be associated with Halloween.

Skeletons of dead people and their respective spirits or ghosts are both part of a pagan harvest festival.

“The bones were burned in what was called a bone-fire, where we get the word bonfire, to release the spirits of the dead, because ghosts hanging around are always threatening and dangerous,” Green said.

Green also mentions that both Christian and pagan Europeans have historically been concerned with how a dead member of the community is buried.

“Nothing is more disturbing than that those who are thought to be dead aren’t and will come back in the form of monsters or zombies or presences in a room. Those beliefs, in fact, are fairly widespread,” Green said. “People still talk about ‘a proper Christian burial.’”

A poll conducted in 2005 actually concluded that around half of Americans still believe in ghosts or the dead returning on some occasions.

The holiday actually arrived in the United States via the Celts in Ireland. They brought with them the legend of the jack-o-lantern, a ghost who carried a coal from hell in a hollowed-out turnip. The Irish fled their home country in 1848 because of the infamous potato famine. The turnip was replaced with the pumpkin and the tradition continued to live on in the United States.

The phrase “trick or treat” actually originates in the United States and carries with it much more sinister consequences compared to the legions of children who utter the meaningless threat when they celebrate modern Halloween.

“Drinking was very heavy in America, and groups of people would spend the week with bonfires, drinking, eating and doing all sorts of promiscuous things. Green said part of what they did [was] go demand liquor or they [would] knock over your outhouse. The notion is you give me a treat or I’m going to do something nasty.”

These traditional debaucheries and threats were tempered with the arrival of widespread industrialization and consumerism in American society. Halloween was influenced by these historical trends as businesses sought to cash in on the holiday.

“Consumer spending by the middle class became integrated into these holidays at the same time these holidays became integrated into the family life, because the middle class emphasized domesticity and these holidays became increasingly oriented toward children and increasingly oriented toward consumerism,” Green said.

This is where Americans first started to associate Halloween with an aspect of the holiday that all children know and love: candy.

“Basically, it’s all about the candy, but I honestly don’t know the meaning of it,” junior Aziza Bell said.

The association with candy comes as a link to the rise of consumerism. The actual threat of “trick or treat” became tame because the threat carried behind the words no longer carried any malicious intent, and the treat turned from liquor to mass produced candy.

The innovation of the Halloween costume was also a way for an American society geared toward consumerism to turn a profit from the holiday of Halloween.

“What you get now are little kids going door to door who have commercially acquired costumes eating mostly commercially made candy,” Green said.

The religious undertones of the holiday and the connection to the dead have now been supplanted by the new traditions based on consumerism. Halloween became less of a holiday for honoring the dead and more of a holiday centered on candy, costumes and scary movies.

“It increasingly becomes an occasion for a party with your friends, and it doesn’t bear any religious implications it once had, and the kinds of ornaments we have are just kind of romantic silliness,” Green said.

The holiday continues in the United States, albeit in a different form than when it was invented. Businesses stand to profit from the holiday, but Halloween has another draw for Americans.

“It’s fun to indulge. … When else can you dress up and look kind of goofy?” Green said.

[Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]