5 fun facts you didn't know about Halloween


The celebration has almost 2,000 years of history.

    Halloween is even older than Christianity itself. It all started as a pre-Christian Celtic festival called Samhain, which means summers end.

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Trick-or-treating dates back to the Middle Ages.

    Back then, it was known as guising in Scotland and Ireland. Young people dressed up in costumes and went door-to-door looking for food or money in exchange for performing songs, poems or other tricks.

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Some Halloween rituals were used to find a husband

    During the 18th century, single ladies devised Halloween traditions that were supposed to help them meet their romantic match.

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19th-century immigrants popularized Halloween in the U.S.

    When the Irish fled the potato famine that devastated their country in the 1840s, they brought their Halloween traditions with them

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The largest Halloween parade takes place in New York City

    The annual event, which began in 1973, is held in Greenwich Village. The parade draws nearly 2 million spectators and includes roughly 70,000 costumed participants.

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