HALLOWEEN: For many people, Halloween is a favorite holiday. It’s not about the candy.

For many, it’s playful, safe and imaginative fun. It’s wearing a costume and being someone else with social acceptance.

Halloween-themed activities have become more prevalent in recent years, as trick-or-treating is more difficult, with work schedules of parents interfering, along with concerns about safety. Events like “trunk or treat” and parties at community centers are becoming more prevalent, offering safer alternatives.

The history of Halloween dates back to The Celts and the festival of Samhain — pronounced sow-in. The day marked the end of summer and of the harvest, and the beginning of the dark, cold winter.

“The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was more commonly recognized in Maryland and the southern colonies,” states History.com.

“As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

“Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

“In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

“Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s ‘trick-or-treat’ tradition.”