Chris, All Hallows Eve comes from a tradition of the Druids of Ireland. Druids were the leaders of an ancient European religion we call today, Pagan.

The Roman branch of the Catholic religion was known for making concessions in order to gain converts. Most notably was the Roman practice of worshiping idols; hence the statues of Saints which the Roman Catholic pray to until this day.

When it came to the tribes of northern Europeans, the Autumn festival for the numerous Gods was changed to All Hallows Eve. Jack-O-Lantern, made from a pumpkin comes from a tale about a guy by the name of Jack who was so cruel, neither heaven nor hell would have him. His spirit, so the tale went, was doomed to wander the nights with a turnip for a lantern and a lump of coal to light his path.

Other modern traditions such as the Christmas Tree, for instance, comes from the concessions to the Germanic Tribes and their pagan rituals of worshiping the tree which did not die in the winter.

Prior to the Roman Catholic church, back when Christianity was a death sentence in Rome, the first branch of Christianity outside Israel, was located in Chaldea, modern day Iraq. The Chaldean's had a spring tradition of celebrating the marriage of the sun-god Sol (where we get the word Solar from) to  his mistress Esther, where we get the word Easter from and celebrate the resurrection of Christ with Sunday morning worship services. This is a play off of worshiping the sun. The Easter Bunny shows the rites of fertility and was considered the optimum time for humans to breed, as a child conceived in March or April had a better chance of survival than one born in February.

Holiday being a compound  word for Holy-Day; Americans take vacations instead of Holidays. For us holidays are reserved for special calender events such as Thanksgiving (another play on Oktoberfest or the harvest feast), Christmas, New Years (both are Cesar's Birthday), and Easter (covered earlier).

There are many stories of the origins of Halloween, from Satan's Birthday to ancient time when Europeans would drive out the evil spirits from their villages; but today, in the United States, children dress up and go door to door saying, "Trick-Or-Treat" and we hand out candy to them all.

This particular holiday is not a Federal Holiday where banks and the post offices are closed. Halloween remains controversial to this day, especially among the more fundamentally religious people.

I hope this help explain...

Yank My Doodle, It's a Dandy!