10/28/2026
As homes across America don their cobwebs, ghosts, and jack-'o-lanterns, you may ask yourself, “How did the colonies celebrate Halloween during the Revolution?” The short answer is that they didn’t.
Halloween as we know it today is a mix of celtic, pagan, and Christian customs. It is a time when the veil between the living and the dead blurs for spirits to roam their former homes. Its earliest documentation dates over 2000 years ago, when the holiday was better known as Samhain, meaning “summer’s end,” which marked the new year for the ancient Celtic calendar. In the 18th Century, the American colonists would have been familiar with the Church of England’s All Saints Day, or All Hallows’ Day, on November 1st, making October 31 All Hallow’s Eve.
It was not until the 19th-century, when large numbers of Irish and Scottish immigrants settled in America, that Halloween traditions were accepted into the mainstream. Whatever traditions made it to Colonial America found it hard to thrive with the strict Puritan belief systems in New England. However, in the more diverse southern colonies, otherwise pagan and superstitious celebrations emerged earlier.
While the practice of trick-or-treating and jack-o'-lantern can be traced to medieval Europe, Scotland, and early modern Ireland, pumpkins are a distinctly American indication of Autumn. Known as “pompion,” Native Americans and colonists alike revered the squash as crucial to surviving hunger throughout the winter. The Lenni Lenape, as quoted by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, were “very particular in their choice of pumpkins and squashes and in their manner of cooking them.”
When pumpkin seeds made their way to England, upper-class gardeners attempted to grow them as a curious novelty but soon regarded them as a poor man’s meal. In 1763, The Gardeners Dictionary wrote the English frequently planted pumpkins “upon their dunghills.”
So, while George Washington did not dress up as King George III, and Paul Revere did not pay homage to the Headless Horseman, the American colonists would have been familiar with the modern American’s love of pumpkin flavor as the leaves change colors and the air turns chill.
