The History of Halloween
It's just about that time once more. Things are going to go knock in the night. Spook bosses would have you trust that the dead really walk the earth on that day, however Halloween is as much a matter of shadows and mirrors as the blood and guts films we watch. For anybody intrigued, here is a history marked by the modern age holiday known as Halloween.
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To begin with, it was called All Hallows Eve and No!, We aren't speaking of Sleepy Hollow. Hallow means heavenly/holy, such as The Lord's Prayer for all the Sunday schoolers out there.
Early agnostic religions particularly the Celts would celebrate different earth's phases. One such festival was Samhain. Pronounced as "Saw-in," it was a festive that honored the lives of the dead. There was nothing wrong with this, aside from the fact that they didn't didn't discriminate between the "Good" dead and the "Bad" dead. People remembered all of the dead. The date that this celebrations fell on was October 31st.
It doesn't sound too scary so far is it? Well, for the early pagan religions (In The Middle Ages), inclination to superstition was heightened. They feared spirits and the slight thought of them returning back to the living world frightened them.
As history goes, amid this times, ministers of the religion would contact these spirits in an effort to divine the future of the harvest for this was the harvest season too. People depended on those crops as their livelihood and were afraid of curses and getting their crops destroyed by the spirits.
The chuch chose to bring to an end such superstition by adding a bit of Christianity to the event. They moved the All Saints Day from March 13th to November 1st. People would ideally be less scared and be more into the Christian festival rather than the pagan one.
Everyone didn't change their long held convictions however. Individuals chose to mast their faces when out at night hopping roaming spirits would see them as kindred voyagers and suspend their mischief. They additionally utilized cut turnips with candles inside as lanterns.
All Hallows Eve got to be Halloween in modern age. Rather than strolling through the veil between this world and the next, kids dress in an assortment of outfits to scare each other senseless and get a bit of Candy-treat all the while. The only spirits around on Halloween are the ones we make on the movie set. Keep an eye out, though!
