Introduction
Halloween’s a fun celebration where neighbours go door-to-door to get yummy candy. This is done while dressed in scary costumes, usually by kids. There’s bonfires that are held, witches all around, and haunted houses being visited heavily.
There’s a lot more to this celebration. A lot of dark and deadly history. Let’s learn.
What & When is Halloween
It has many different names; Halloween, Hallowe’en, Allhalloween, All Hallows’ Eve, and All Saints’ Eve.
It’s celebrated in many countries on October 31st. It is the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year to remember the dead, including saints & martyrs.
Halloween’s Origins
It originates from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which means ‘Summer’s End’. The Celts, who lived 2000 years ago mostly near modern-day Ireland, UK, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. It is celebrated at the end of harvest season.
It was believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was its thinnest on this day, allowing spirits, demons and other mythical creatures to walk among us.
Costumes
During Samhain Celts may have worn costumes made of animal skins and heads to hide their faces and appearances and for easier communication with spirits and the dead, including spirits from different worlds.
Trick or Treating
In later centuries, people dressed as ghosts, demons, and other dangerous spirits, doing antics in exchange for food and drink. This is known as mumming, dating back to the Middle Ages and is thought to be an antecedent of trick-or-treating.
By 1000 AD in Celtic lands poor people practiced “souling”, where they visited rich peoples’ to houses to get soul cakes in exchange for promising to pray for the souls of the homeowners’ dead relatives. This was later done by children, who would go from door to door asking for gifts such as food, money and ale.
Bonfires
Another popular Halloween tradition is bonfires. It is said that these bonfires were lit to celebrate the end of summer and to chase off harmful spirits. Other sources state that ancients Celts performed featured many sacrifices to the Celtic gods of death, with both animals and humans thrown in to huge firepits as offerings during Samhain.
Haunted Houses
Haunted houses are where everyone’s hanging out during Halloween, so why aren’t you?
Haunted houses are houses where spirits of the dead reside. These spirits used to be connected to or live in the house in while they were alive in natural human form. Usually, these spirits got served with serious foul play in the form of murder, accidental death, or suicide. Everyone likes to visit them on Halloween.
Pumpkins
Along with ancient Druids eating their first-born children or drinking human sacrifices blood from cauldrons, hollowed out pumpkins and turnips would be filled with fat from previous sacrifices and lit.
Everyone’s looking to make Halloween drinks. Instead of what druids drank out of cauldrons, here’s a few adult drinks that are great in combination with edible glitter:
- Hot Toddy
- Hocus Pocus Punch
- Halloween Margarita
- Tequila Sunrise
Witches
A witch is person who is credited with having usually harmful supernatural powers, including communicate with the dead.
“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.
Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee”.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12a, King James Version of the Bible
