How Did Apples Become a Halloween Tradition?

If the apple really is the forbidden fruit, it’s no wonder it has deep ties to Halloween. But how did a fruit synonymous with the fall harvest wind up at our spookiest celebrations? And who decided plunging our faces in water to grab bobbing apples by the teeth was a good time? The answers stretch back more than 2,500 years to the ancient Celtic festival Samhain, which is widely considered the precursor to Halloween.

The Celts celebrated Samhain, pronounced “SAH-win,” on October 31 and November 1 by wearing animal heads and skins, dancing around huge bonfires and sacrificing animals and crops. After Rome conquered much of the Celtic world in the first century B.C., it’s believed apples became associated with Samhain because of the minor Roman goddess Pomona. Pomona was the goddess of fruit trees and orchards, and the apple was her symbol. The Romans are thought to have celebrated her during a fall harvest festival in August.

In her 2012 book Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, Lisa Morton refutes the idea that Romans introduced apples to Samhain. However, she writes: “Given that apples ripen in October, and that Samhain was held at the end of the month, it seems likely that apples would have been plentiful at Celtic Samhain feasts.”

In the eighth century, the Christian Church replaced Samhain with the celebration of All Saints’ Day on November 1. The night before became All Hallows’ Eve, which we know as Halloween. Over time, Halloween was a mix of secular and Christian traditions.

As the National Museum of Ireland has explained, apples were plentiful around Samhain, so using them for games was a natural evolution. Apple-based games like bobbing for apples continued to be popular, particularly around Halloween, in Great Britain for centuries, Morton writes.

In Europe and eventually the United States, people used apple-bobbing to prophesy a relationship with a sweetheart. Apples were tagged with names and placed in the water. Whoever appeared on the tag of the apple you bit would be your future match. Another variation was the game of snap apple in which apples were hung by strings instead of bobbed in water. The first person to sink their teeth into one of the apples would be on their way to wedded bliss.

Today, these games survive as fun Halloween traditions, though don’t expect to learn anything about your would-be beau based on the apple you bite.

Before candy was the primary Halloween treat, apples and nuts were the two common holiday handouts. Trick-or-treating dates all the way back to Samhain, when people would leave food or other items out for returning spirits that were believed to visit during the festival. In 16th-century Ireland and Scotland, trick-or-treating was known as “guising.” Kids would go door-to-door wearing masks or costumes and ask for food. They didn’t say “trick or treat!” either. That term didn’t appear until around the 1920s in Canada. Instead, Irish children asked their neighbors “any nuts or apples?” And that’s usually what they got.