Halloween is upon us, when ghouls, ghosts, witches and warlocks come out to spook the living... and the living dress up like the undead. Halloween is a time for fun, a time for superstitions and spirits. Fancy dress, fake blood and trick-or-treat are traditional but many people celebrate Halloween without knowing how this holiday was originated and how it evolved into what it is today.
Halloween is on October 31st, the last day of the Celtic calendar. It was a pagan holiday. All Hallows Eve (Halloween) is the evening before All Saints´ Day, which was created by Christians to convert pagans, and it is celebrated on November 1st.
ANCIENT ORIGINS
Halloween´s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (Old Irish-meaning summer´s end). The Celts, who lived 2000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and Northern France, celebrated their New Year on November 1st. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. On the night of October 31st, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to death!
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic dieties. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other´s fortunes.
By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in the late October when Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees.
By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1st All Saints´ Day a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the Pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All- hallowmas (Middle English-meaning All Saints´ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and , eventually, Halloween.
