Has it occurred to you, why is that some people prefer a scary costume and people chanting scary groans during the time of Halloween? Why do people spend significant amount of money on this day? Where did it all begin?
Halloween dates back to ancient Celtic period who lived 2000 years ago in the surrounding area of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France. The Celtic festival was called Samhain and was celebrated to mark the new year on November 1. This marked the end of bright summer and harvest season and beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time associated with death. Celts believed that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred just before their new year. On the October 31, the Celts celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghost of the dead returned to earth.
To commemorate the event, the Celts built huge bonfires and burn the crops and sacrificed animals. People dressed typically as animals and attempted to tell the fortune of each other who are awaiting them long winter. Therefore, we can trace back the origins of Halloween to the Celts.
On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Irish immigrants make this festival popular in America. 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.
The American Halloween tradition of “trick-or-treating” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits.
Halloween dressing in costume has European and Celtic origins. People were anxious and frightened of the long dark nights and cold winter. People dressed as ghosts in order to disguise from the ghosts visiting the earth. 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 needs to understood properly in order not to slide into superstition or public disorder. Its origins show us that this festival is celebrated for a reason and reason being cold and long winter nights. It has its significance to Christianity where in the people dressed as saints on all Saints Day to remember the holiness of the persons. Let us not be paranoid or overwhelm at Halloween festivities. Let us make this celebration to benefit someone as the Europeans did by giving "soul cake" to the poor.
No comments:
Post a Comment