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From communion with the dead
to pumpkins and pranks, Halloween
is a patchwork holiday stitched together with cultural,
religious, and occult traditions that spanned centuries.
It all began
with the Celts, a people whose culture had spread across Europe
more than two thousand years ago. October 31st
was the day they celebrated the end of the harvest season in a festival
called Samhain. That night also marked the Celtic New Year
and was considered a time between years, a magical time
when the ghosts of the Dead walked the earth.
It was the time when the veil
between death and life was supposed to be at its thinnest.
On Samhain, the villagers gathered and lit huge bonfires
to drive the dead back to the spirit world and keep them away from the living.
But as the catholic church's influence grew in Europe,
it frowned on the pagan rituals like Samhain
In the seventh century the vatican begin to merge it with the church sanctioned holiday.
So November 1st was designated All Saints Day
to honor martyrs and the deceased faithful (Catholics).
Both these holidays had to do with the afterlife and
about survival after death. It was a calculated move
on the part of the church to bring
more people into the fold. All Saints Day was known then
as HALLOWMAS. HALLOW means holy or saintly
so the translation is roughly mass of the Saints
the night before October 31st was All Hallows Eve
which gradually morphed into Halloween.
The holiday came to America
with the wave of Irish immigrants during the potato famine
of the 1840s. They brought several of their holiday customs with them
including bobbing for apples and playing tricks on neighbors.
Like removing gates from the front of houses. The young pranksters
wore masks so they wouldn't be recognized but over the years the
traditional harmless tricks grew into outright vandalism.
Back in the 1930s, it really became a
dangerous holiday. There was
such hooliganism
and vandalism. Trick-or-treating
was originally an extortion deal
give us candy or we will trash your house.
Storekeepers and neighbor's began giving
treats or bribes to stop the tricks and children were encouraged to travel
door-to-door for treat
as an alternative to trouble making. By the late 1930s,
trick-or-treat became a holiday greeting