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the Origins of Halloween
The ancient Celtic festival
called Samhain is considered by many to be a predecessor of our contemporary
Halloween. Samhain was the New Year's Day of the Celts and was celebrated
on 1 November. It was a joyful harvest festival that marked the death
of the old year and the beginning of a new one. It was also a day
of the dead, a time when it was believed that the souls of those who had
died during the year were allowed access to the land of the dead.
It was related to the season, by Samhain the crops should be harvested
and the animals brought in from the distant fields. Many traditional
beliefs and customs were associated with Samhain. Most notable was
that night was the time of the wandering dead, the practice of leaving
offerings of food and drink to masked and costumed revelers, and the lighting
of bonfires, continued to be practiced on 31 October, known as the Eve
of All Saints, the Eve of All Hallows, or Hallow Even. It is the glossing
of the name Hallow Even that has given us the name Hallow e'en. Come
evening, evil spirits were everywhere. Charms and spells were said to have
more power on the eve of Samhain. The spirits of Samhain, once thought
to be wild and powerful, were now said to be something worse: Evil.
The church maintained that the gods and goddesses and other spiritual beings
of traditional religions were diabolical deceptions, that the spiritual
forces that people had experienced were real, but they were manifestations
of the Devil, the Prince of Liars, who misled people toward the worship
of false idols. Thus, the customs associated with Halloween included
representations of ghosts and human skeletons--symbols of the dead--and
of the devil and other malevolent, evil creatures, such as witches were
said to be. The original festival for the pagan Lord of the Dead
became a festival of Christian dead. People went on expecting the
arrival of ghosts on Oct. 31st. Halloween has become one
of the most
widely celebrated festivals on the contemporary American calendar, and
it is not even officially a holiday. No day off is given for Halloween,
no federal decree is proclaimed establishing it as a national holiday.
People just celebrate it!