Today we tend to think of Halloween as the day we dress in costumes, decorate our houses and eats lots of candy and other goodies. But were do this Holiday originate from?
2000 years ago were the Celtic people lived “Ireland, United Kingdom, Northern France”, they celebrated there New Year on November 1st. This date marked the end of summer and the time of the best harvest and the beginning pf the cold dark winter. In those days people associated winter with human death. The Celtic people believed on the night before the New Year the world between the living and the dead would come entwined. On this night of October 31st they celebrated Samhain.
Samhain was the night that they believed that the ghost of the dead returned to the earth. During the Papacy of Pope Beniface IV the tradition was kept alive by him making November 1st All Saints Day and later he started to call it All Souls Day.
In around 1840 the Irish brought the celebration of Halloween the United States. Today we dress up in costumes and go around to the houses in our neighborhood and ask for treats but this tradition dates back to the Irish.
During the great Irish potato famine the poor people would go the more fortunate and beg for food and money or whatever they would offer them. If the wealthy would refuse then the poor would tell them that the evil spirits of the dead would come and kill them.
It came a custom that the Irish upper society would not want something bad to happen to them so they would prepare bags of treats to give to the poor when they visited there home.
The name Halloween is a shortened version of All-hallow-even which is known as the day before All Saints Day.
Today we celebrate Halloween in a modern way but many of the customs and traditions are very similar to the ancient version of All-hallow-even.
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Author Source: Bryan Burbank
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