The Origins of Halloween

What many believe is the devil's birthday or a mass money grab by the candy industry . So let us take a journey through history to see what it really is.

The history of Halloween travels back to a long time ago to a Celtic festival called Samhain also known as (sow-in). The Celtics celebrated their new year on the first day of November. This marked the end of summertime and harvest and the start of Winter, which the Celtics associated with death. On the night before the New Year, the last day of October, the Celtics believed that the world of the living and the world of the dead would come together. On that night they celebrated Samhain.

To celebrate Samhain Druids, Celtic priests, built large sacred bonfires. There they assembled to burn crops and animals as sacrifice to Celtic deities, or gods. During the celebration, Celtics wore ensembles made with animal heads and skins.

Later on in history around 43 A.D., the Roman Empire conquered most of the Celtic ground. When they conquered this ground they brought some of their traditions with them. Which ended up with two festivals of Roman origin combining with Samhain. One of the festivals was Feralia a day in the later weeks of October when Romans commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, Pomona. One of Pomona's symbol is an apple which probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples during Halloween.

Farther on in history, the church made November 1st All Saints Day to celebrate saints and martyrs, and November 2nd All Souls Day to honor the dead. All Souls Day had traditions similar to that of Samhain in an attempt by the church to dismiss Celtic traditions. The day before All Saints Day started to be called All Hallows Eve and is now known as Halloween.

Halloween came to America

from England and as the times began to change the American version of Halloween started. The first type of celebrations was known as "play parties," which were public events where everyone gathered and partied. With the waves of immigrants coming to America, the traditions they brought began to shape the tradition of Halloween. To create a more friendly version of Halloween, newspapers and people of higher status began to tell parents to take anything of superstition or monstrous things should be taken out. This made Halloween lose the more religious and superstitious elements.

After this, Halloween became a more friendly holiday with parades, parties, trick or treating, costumes, and carving pumpkins. It's a bunch of traditions mushed together and made into a mass party for everyone to celebrate and have fun with. So go ahead dress up and embrace whatever character you wish to be. Halloween is a day to have fun.

http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween