How to Explain halloween costumes for kids to Your Mom
ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN
Halloween's roots date back into the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 decades back from the place that is now Ireland, the thehalloweencostumes.com uk and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
This day marked the conclusion of the summer and summer harvest and also the start of the dark, cold winter, a time of year which was regularly associated with human departure. Celts believed that on the night before the year, the border between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 3-1 they celebrated Samhain, as it had been believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the existence of the otherworldly spirits made it much easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to produce predictions in the foreseeable future. For many individuals entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies have been an important supply of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the party, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes.
After the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them throughout the coming cold winter.
Did You Know?
1 quarter of the candies sold yearly in the U.S. is acquired for Halloween.
By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. At the plan of the 400 years they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
The very first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead person. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and timber. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and also the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of"bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
ALL SAINTS DAY
On May 1-3, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of Martyrs Day was created in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later on expanded the festival to include most of saints along with all of martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
From the 9th century that the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, by which it steadily combined together and supplanted the Celtic rites. At 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the deadperson. It is widely thought today that the church has been attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related church-sanctioned vacation season.
All Souls Day has been celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The Saints Day party was likewise called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (in Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night ahead of , the traditional nights Samhain from the Celtic religion, begun to be predicted All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
HALLOWEEN Involves AMERICA
Celebration of all Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England on account of the rigid Protestant belief systems . Halloween was a lot more prevalent in Maryland and the southern colonies.
Whilst the beliefs and customs of different European cultural groups together with the Western Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween started to arise. The first celebrations included"play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of their dead, tell each other's fortunes, sing and dancing.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost tales and mischief making of kinds. At the center of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the nation.
In the 2nd half the century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, served popularize the celebration of Halloween nationwide.
Trick or Treat
Borrowing 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 the"trickortreat" custom. Women believed that on Halloween they can divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
In the late 1800sthere was a movement in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. In the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both kids and adults became the most frequently encountered method to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of this summer and festive costumes.
Parents have been encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to get anything"frightening" or"grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. As a consequence of those efforts, Halloween lost the majority of its superstitious and religious overtones from the beginning of the twentiethcentury.
HALLOWEEN Events
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades along with town-wide Halloween events as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of several schools and communities, vandalism began to plague many parties in many communities in the period.
From the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the younger . As a result of high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or residence, wherever they could be more easily adapted.
Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old custom of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trickortreating was a somewhat inexpensive way for a whole community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats.
Thus, a brand new American tradition had been born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend approximately $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second biggest business holiday following Christmas.
SOUL CAKES
The Halloween tradition of"trickortreating" almost certainly dates back to early All Souls' Day parades in England. Throughout the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called"soul cakes" in return for their promise to plead to the family of dead family members.
The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as ways to restore the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The clinic, that has been referred for"going a-souling" was finally taken up by children who would visit the properties in their neighborhood and be given ale, food and money.
The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. More than 100 years back, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, because of the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry.
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On Halloween, when it had been believed that ghosts came back into the planet, people thought they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. In order to prevent being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks whenever they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.
On Halloween, to continue to keep ghosts away from their houses, folks would place bowls of food out of their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from wanting to enter.
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with secret, magic and superstition. It started like a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which folks felt notably near deceased family members and family members. For these spirits that are friendly , they place sites at the dinner table, abandoned snacks on doorsteps and along the side of the trail and decorated candles to help family members find their way back into the spirit environment.
Now's Halloween ghosts are often depicted as far more fearsome and malevolent, and also our customs and superstitions are scarier far way too. We avoid crossing paths with cats that are black, fearful they may carry us bad fortune. This notion has its roots in the dark ages, when many folks considered that dinosaurs averted detection by turning themselves to black cats.
We make an effort not to walk for the same rationale. This superstition could have come in the early Egyptians, who believed the triangles had been sacred (it also may have some thing todo with the simple fact walking below a leaning ladder has been fairly dangerous ). And approximately Halloween, notably, we make an effort to avoid dividing mirrors, stepping on cracks in the highway or spilling salt.
HALLOWEEN Match-making
However, think about the Halloween customs and beliefs that today's trick or treaters have neglected everything about? Many of those outdated rituals focused to the near future instead of the past and also the alive instead of the useless person.
Specifically, numerous had to do with supporting women establish their prospective husbands and reassuring them that they would --with luck, by next Halloween--be married. In 18th century Irelanda match-making cook may spoil a ring within her mashed-potatoes on Halloween evening, hoping to attract true love to the diner who detected it.
In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended an eligible younger woman name a hazel nut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burnt to ashes as an alternative to popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl's husband. (In certain versions with the legend, the contrary was true: The nut that burned away revealed a love which would not last)
One other narrative had it that if your young female ate a sour concoction crafted from walnuts, hazelnuts and peppermint before bed Halloween evening she'd dream about her upcoming partner.
Young girls pitched apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping the lotions would fall over the floor inside the shape of the future husbands' initials; tried to learn regarding their futures by peering in egg yolks floating in a bowl of waterand burst facing of mirrors at darkened rooms, retaining looking over their shoulders for their husbands' faces.
Other civilizations are somewhat more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the very first guest to come across a burr onto the chestnut-hunt are the first ever to wed; others, the first powerful apple-bobber would be the down the aisle.
Of course, no matter if we're asking for romantic information or trying to avoid seven decades of bad luck, every one of these simple brilliant Halloween superstitions relies on the character of their same"spirits" whose presence that the early Celts felt so keenly.
