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Historic ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN
Halloween's origins date back into the early Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 decades back at the region that is now Ireland, the uk and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
This afternoon marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year which was regularly associated with human departure. Celts believed that on the evening until the year, the border between the realms of those living and the dead became blurred. On the nights October 3-1 they celebrated Samhain, when it was thought that the ghosts of the dead came back to ground.
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the existence of the otherworldly spirits made it much a lot easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the long term. For many folks entirely dependent on the volatile all-natural world, these prophecies have been an essential source of comfort and direction during the long, dark wintermonths.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the deities. During the halloween costumes at celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to share with one another'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 during the coming cold winter.
Did You Know?
1 quarter of all the candies sold yearly from the U.S. is bought for Halloween.
By forty three A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the bulk of Celtic territory. In the span of the 400 years they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the death of the dead. The 2nd was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The image of Pomona is the apple, and 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 martyrsas well as the Catholic feast of Most Martyrs Day was created at the Western civilization. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to incorporate all saints together with all martyrs, and transferred the observance from May 13 to November 1.
From the 9th century that the sway of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, by which it slowly blended together and supplanted the Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It's widely considered now that the church has been attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related church-sanctioned vacation season.
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 party was likewise referred to as All-hallows or All-hallowmas (in Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the evening before itthe traditional night of Samhain from the Celtic faith, begun to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
HALLOWEEN Concerns AMERICA
Celebration of Halloween was exceptionally constrained in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems . Halloween was a whole lot more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.
Because the beliefs and customs of different European cultural groups in addition to the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween started to arise. The very first celebrations included"play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share tales of their dead, tell each other's fortunes, sing and dance.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost tales and mischief making of all kinds. By the middle of the century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated all around the country.
In the second half the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, served to 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 money or food, a practice that eventually became today's"trickortreat" tradition. Women felt 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 has been a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. In the conclusion of the century, Halloween parties for both kids and adults became the absolute most common way to rejoice daily. Events focused on games, foods of the season and merry costumes.
Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything"frightening" or"grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. As a consequence of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones from the beginning of the twentiethcentury.
HALLOWEEN PARTIES
From the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered festival, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Inspite of the very best efforts of several schools and communities, vandalism began to plague a few parties in many communities during the time period.
By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the youngchild. As a result of elevated quantities of small children throughout the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or house, where they are more easily accommodated.
In between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick or treating was also revived. Trick or treating was a somewhat inexpensive method for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played them by supplying the local children with small treats.
So , a new American tradition was born, plus it has continued to rise. Today, Americans spend around $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second biggest business holiday soon immediately right after xmas.
SOUL CAKES
The Halloween tradition of"trickortreating" possibly dates back into 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 deceased relatives.
The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to restore the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which had been referred to as"moving a-souling" was eventually taken up by children who would go to the houses within their area and be given ale, money and food.
The custom of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. More than 100 years before, winter was an uncertain and frightening moment. Food supplies often ran low and, because of the many people afraid of this dark, the short days of winter were full of constant stress.
But on Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the planet, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized with these ghosts, individuals would wear masks whenever they left their houses after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.
On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, folks would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and keep them from wanting to get into.
Halloween has always been any occasion full of mystery, magic and superstition. It commenced like a end-of-summer festival during which folks felt notably close to deceased family members and friends. For these spirits that were friendly they set areas in the dinner table, abandoned treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones locate their way back to the soul environment.
Now's Halloween ghosts tend to be portrayed as additional gruesome and malevolent, and also our habits and superstitions are scarier too. We stay away from crossing trails with black cats, afraid that they might deliver us bad luck. This idea has its own roots in the dark ages, when lots of people considered that witches prevented detection by turning them into black cats.
We try never to walk for the same explanation. This superstition might have come from the early Egyptians, that believed triangles have been sacred (it may also have some thing to do with the simple fact that walking underneath a leaning ladder tends to be fairly dangerous ). And approximately Halloween, especially, we decide to make an effort in order to avoid dividing mirrors, stepping on cracks from the trail or spilling salt.
HALLOWEEN Match-making
However, what about the Halloween customs and beliefs that today's trick-or-treaters have neglected all about? A number of the obsolete rituals focused to the future instead of the past and the living rather than the useless person.
In particular, numerous had to accomplish with supporting women establish their prospective husbands and reassuring them they would --with luck, by following Halloween--be married. In 18thcentury Ireland, a match making cook might bury a ring in her mashed-potatoes on Halloween evening time, hoping to attract real love into the diner who detected it.
Back in Scotland, fortune tellers recommended an eligible younger woman title a hazel nut for each of her suitors then toss the nuts into the fire. The nut that burned to ash as opposed to exploding or popping, the story went, represented the woman's future husband. (In certain versions of the legend, the alternative has been true: The nut which burnt away symbolized a romance that wouldn't last.)
One other tale had it that if your young female ate a sour concoction crafted from walnuts, hazelnuts and peppermint until bed on Halloween night she'd dream of her upcoming spouse.
Young women tossed apple-peels above their shouldershoping the peels would fall over the floor in the shape of the husbands' initials; tried to learn regarding their futures by glancing at egg yolks floating into a bowl of plain water and burst facing of mirrors in darkened chambers, retaining looking over their shoulders to get their husbands' faces.
Other civilizations were competitive. At certain Halloween parties, even the very first guest to come across a burr onto a chestnut-hunt are the first ever to wed; in others, the very first successful apple-bobber are the first down the aisle.
Of course, whether we're asking for romantic info or attempting to avoid seven decades of awful luck, each of these brilliant Halloween superstitions is determined by the goodwill of their same"spirits" whose presence that the ancient Celts felt so keenly.
