Halloween’s Real History: Where the Witch Aesthetic Actually Came From

Every October, millions of people dress as a witch: pointed hat, green face, black cat, broomstick. It is the single most popular adult costume in the UK and has been for years. Almost none of it comes from witchcraft.

The real story is stranger and more interesting — a Celtic fire festival, a Catholic calendar shuffle, a gunpowder plot, and a Victorian fashion industry that needed something to sell in late October.

Samhain: the part that is genuine

The oldest layer is Samhain (roughly “summer’s end”), the Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest and the start of the dark half of the year. It fell around 1 November, one of the four quarter-days of the medieval Irish and Scottish year.

What people actually did at Samhain, as far as the record shows: brought cattle down from summer pasture, slaughtered what would not overwinter, lit bonfires, and held assemblies. The “veil between worlds” idea is real folklore — this was understood as a time when the boundary between the living and the dead was thin, and when the aos sí (the fair folk) were abroad.

One genuinely old custom: going door to door in disguise, reciting verses in exchange for food. That is the ancestor of trick-or-treating, and it is genuinely Celtic, not American.

What the Christians did with it

In the 8th century the Church moved All Saints’ Day to 1 November, absorbing the festival rather than suppressing it — the standard pattern. The night before became All Hallows’ Eve, hence “Halloween”.

Then came souling: on All Souls’ Day (2 November) the poor went door to door offering prayers for the household’s dead in exchange for “soul cakes”. Children later took it over. In England this merged with the older guising tradition and, in the north, with something else entirely.

Guy Fawkes: the bit Americans find baffling

In Britain, 5 November — Bonfire Night — absorbed a lot of what Halloween is in the US. After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, Parliament established 5 November as a day of thanksgiving, and it became the country’s big autumn fire festival: bonfires, fireworks, effigies, and children collecting “a penny for the guy”.

For most of the 19th and early 20th century, Guy Fawkes Night was the dominant autumn celebration in England. Halloween as we now know it only became widespread here from the 1980s onwards, largely through American television. So when someone says Halloween is “not British”, the honest answer is: the bones are older here than anywhere, but the modern version came back across the Atlantic.

So where does the witch costume come from?

Here is the uncomfortable part. Very little of the witch aesthetic comes from pagan practice. It comes from propaganda and fashion.

• The pointed hat. Probably from the “Judenspielhut” — the cone-shaped hat Jews were forced to wear in medieval Europe — and from Quaker and Puritan plain dress. Anti-Semitic and anti-dissent caricature, later transferred to witches in illustration.
• The hooked nose and green skin. Straight out of early modern witch-hunt woodcuts and pamphlets, then codified by 19th-century illustrators and, finally, by Hollywood.
• The black cat. A familiar — an animal companion — appears in trial records, but the standard black-cat-on-a-broomstick pairing is largely Victorian illustration.
• The broomstick. Present in some trial testimony about “flying ointment” folklore, but mostly popularised by cheap print and pantomime.

In other words: for roughly 300 years, the witch costume was a costume of a persecuted person. Between 1560 and 1700, several thousand people — mostly women, in Scotland and England — were executed for witchcraft. Scotland’s last execution for witchcraft was in 1727.

Does that mean you shouldn’t dress up?

No. But it is worth knowing two things.

First, modern witches and pagans exist. Wicca is a real, practised religion that developed in mid-20th-century Britain, and plenty of people are genuinely annoyed by the “green-faced hag” being the only representation they get. Dressing as a witch is not mocking them. Dressing as a witch because witches are silly is closer to it.

Second, “witchy” as a style has now become its own thing — celestial prints, moon jewellery, herbs, altars — and that aesthetic owes more to 1960s counterculture and 1990s goth than to anything historical. It is fine to enjoy it as a style. Just do not mistake it for a heritage you are continuing.

A short timeline

• Pre-Christian: Samhain — harvest end, bonfires, guising.
• 8th century: All Saints’ Day moved to 1 November.
• 1605: Gunpowder Plot; 5 November becomes a British fire festival.
• 1560–1727: Witch trials in Scotland and England; the “witch look” is created by prosecutors and pamphleteers.
• 1800s: Guy Fawkes dominates British autumn; Halloween survives mainly in Ireland and Scotland.
• 1840s: Famine emigration carries Halloween to North America, where it scales up.
• 1980s–now: The American version returns to Britain and takes over.

If you want to do October properly

You do not need a costume to mark it. The oldest version of this season is about finishing the harvest, lighting a fire and acknowledging the dark half of the year. A few small things that fit:

• A candle in the window after dark — an old Irish custom, originally to guide the dead home.
• A small cauldron on the table rather than a full costume: a mini cast iron cauldron works for burning bay leaves with a written intention, and lives in a cupboard for the other eleven months.
• Moon and bat motifs rather than gore — a pair of moon, star and bat earrings says the same thing without the green face paint.
• A tarot pull on the night itself. A themed deck like this Nightmare Before Christmas deck is a nicer party trick than a ouija board, and nobody ends up spooked.
• Something genuinely gothic if you want to go further: a spiderweb choker or a crow and pentagram pair leans into the aesthetic honestly instead of caricaturing it.

And if you just want to dress up and eat sweets, that is fine too. It is your October. It is simply nicer to know whose festival you are at.