Everyone knows that at the end of October we celebrate one of the darkest holidays of the year: Halloween. But how did this started? Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts 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. Celts believed that on the night before the new year the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. By 43 A.D., Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Faralia, a day in late October when the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and this probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween. By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the 17 century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1st All Saints Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. The celebration was also called "All-hallows" and the night before it "All-hallows Eve" and, eventually, Halloween.
As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. The first celebrations included "play parties", public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance, sing and tell ghost stories. Taking from Irish and English traditions , Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people taught that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by the ghosts, they would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter. Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. (source:history.com)
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