Halloween Falls on a Saturday This Year for the Last Time Until 2037
A festival born more than 2,000 years ago at the edge of winter gets its longest night in years, under a waning moon, with chocolate still priced as if cocoa had never fallen.
Photo: Alfredo Marco Pradil / Pexels
Every year on 31st October, children in capes and rubber masks ring doorbells across Britain, Ireland and North America to ask strangers for sweets. Very few of them could tell you they are acting out a ritual older than Christianity in these islands. In 2026 the old festival receives a rare gift from the calendar: Halloween lands on a Saturday for the first time since 2020, and it will not do so again until 2037.
Samhain marked the night the farming year ended
Halloween began as Samhain, the festival the Celtic peoples of Ireland and Britain kept more than 2,000 years ago to close the harvest and open the winter. Cattle came down from summer grazing, the last crops went into store and every household prepared for the hungry, dark months ahead. Samhain itself fell on 1st November, and the celebration took place the night before, on Samhain Eve, with bonfires and feasting.
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