Halloween

The history of Halloween is an interesting one. This ancient Celtic holiday goes back at least 3,000 years ago. The Celts lived in an area as far North as present day Ireland and South to France. The Celts celebrated the Samhain, pronounced "sow-wen", in Ireland on October 31, marking the end of summer and the beginning of winter. This was associated with harvest time and coming cold and death, as darkness descended and freezing temperature encapsulated everything.

Druid priest would start the festival by praying to their deities in hopes that their people would make it through the terrible winter time. The Celts believed that the dead and evil spirits filled the earth to reek havoc on crops causing damage and trouble. Bonfires and gatherings were done, sacrifices of animals, and costume wearing of horrible, scary mask were used to appease the dead and spiteful spirits.

By the fist century AD, Romans had enveloped nearly all Celtic land. The Romans started to join two of their festivals into the already Celtic tradition. "Feralia" to honor the dead and "Pomona" to honor the trees and fruit. The name Halloween started as "All Hallow's Eve", the night before and, "All Hallow's Day". By 800 AD the Pope Boniface wanted to replace the old pagan festival with a more Catholic-Christian holiday on Nov.1 as "All Saint's Day" to honor the saints and nameless dead. The combined festivals were done exactly the same way, dressing up, bonfires, and celebrating the departed.

The Christian church took many pagan festivals and incorporated them into Christian holidays. Halloween was known as a festival of death and life. A time of wondering dead, deceased relatives, and scary spirits. It was commonly practice to leave offerings of food, drink, wearing costumes, and bonfires to calm the roaming spirits of the night.

European immigrants brought Halloween to America. In colonial time this Celtic tradition of Samhain slowly started spreading during the end of the harvest season. But as the Irish flooded America in the early 1800's, the celebration of Halloween really took off. The gathering of people and telling "scary stories" of the dead, dancing, singing, eating, and mischief-making became commonplace across the country.

Halloween evolved into a total celebration of the dead. The practice of costumes, masks, sharing scary stories, trick-or-treating hasn't changed much. Trick-or-treating goes back to ancient times on "All Souls Day" as the Druids and Christians would go from house to house asking for offerings such as food, soul cake, or money. The tradition has formed into children asking for candy or treats throughout their neighborhood.

Today, America and many other countries have totally embraced this religious and superstitious holiday. Now every year on October 31, an exuberant amount of decorations, assorted hideous costumes, ghoulish make-up, and everything scary takes over the community. Suddenly, Jack O'Laterns, jagged-tooth pumpkins with eerie, flickering flames appear on every doorstep at night. As autumn begins with leaves falling and the inevitable arrival of carved, scary faces on pumpkins is both delightful and haunting.

Halloween is for the young and old. Halloween is full of fun and games, with primary colors of black and orange, sharing traditional food of the season, bonfires, making scary sounds and pranks, watching horror films, telling scary stories, music, dancing, haunting mask, costume parties, and bobbing for apples. This has become one of the most profitable holidays of the year. With America and other countries spending billions on scaring the heck out of each other and having fun doing it