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The
History of
Halloween
Have you
ever wondered
why we
celebrate
Halloween and
where the idea
came
from? If
you are like
most of us, you
simply enjoy
the fun and
games – and of
course treats –
and haven’t
really given
the origins of
the holiday
much
thought.
But the history
of Halloween is
a really cool
story in its
own right.
Around two
thousand years
ago there lived
a people known
as
Celts.
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They inhabited the area we
call Ireland, and there were
some in France and the UK,
too. In fact, the
language that is spoken in
Ireland is not Irish, as you
may think. It is
Celtic.
Anyway, the Celtic people
had a different New Year’s Day
than we do here today.
Their new year started on
November 1st; this is probably
because November marked the end
of the plentiful, glorious,
harvest season and the
beginning of the cold, dark
winter. Hence, it seems
like a perfect time for marking
a new year, right?
So, the Celtic people had a
theory that their New Year’s
Eve – October 31 – was the
night when there was the
perfect opportunity for the
ghosts of dead people to return
to earth, and so the worlds of
the living and the dead
combined for a night. On
this night, the Celtic people
turned to their Druid priests
for insight into what was to
come in the New Year. And some
theories of the history of
Halloween include the priests’
ability to know the future by
learning it from the dead who
returned to earth.
So, the early version of
Halloween, called SamHain
(“sow-in”), was born. The
Celts usually built these huge
bonfires and dressed up in the
skins of animals. They
gathered around the bonfires in
these “costumes” and sacrificed
some of their crops and animals
to the Celtic gods in the hopes
that the gods would be good to
them in the coming
year.
Later on, the Romans invaded
Ireland and the other Celtic
regions, and they added their
own twist into what we now know
as Halloween; subsquently the
history of Halloween was
changed a bit. They added
a couple things into
SamHain. First, they
added a day called Faralia –
which was a day the Romans had
set aside as a day to remember
and honor those who had died
before us. Then, they
also included a day to please
Pomona – a goddess whose symbol
is the apple. Remember
those days of bobbing for
apples as a kid? You can
thank Pomona for that
tradition.
Then, Christianity came to
the area – around the
800s. The Pope at the
time – Pope Bonaface – declared
November 1st All Saint’s Day,
which is still celebrated as a
Holy Day by the Catholic
Church. The Church often
times tried to replace pagan
holidays with related holidays
in order to appease the pagan
people who wanted festivals,
but also to make
Christian-based
celebrations. The night
before All Saint’s Day, SamHain
to the Celts, began to be
called All Hallow’s Eve or All
Hallow’s Mass. Finally,
it became known as
Halloween.
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