Halloween or Hallowe’en is an annual celebration which is celebrated on October 31st and is a super popular celebration in most parts of the world. It’s the first of the year-end holidays, prior to Thanksgiving and also December. Just like other popular holidays it has become commercialized and also nearly all people do not know the much about Halloween and how it began.

Most of the customs that are practiced now on Halloween were actually brought over to America by Irish immigrants who celebrated Samhain, a Celtic harvest festival. Samhain is the celebration of the lighter half of the year and also the commencement of the darker half and sometimes this is called the Celtic New Year.

Most of historians also say that Halloween had its beginnings in Roman times from the Roman Feast Pomona, the Goddess of fruits and seeds. Everything that we do today on Halloween is rooted in some way to the very old Celtic custom regardless of how removed the current day’s celebrations may be different from the real thing.

How did Halloween get its name?

The information about Halloween demonstrate that it wasn’t always called Halloween. Truly some say the appropriate spelling ought to be Hallowe’en. The very first form of Halloween was the Celtic festival Samhain. Samhain marked the end of the harvest period and a period when pagans stocked up on winter stores and also slaughtered sheep.

The name Halloween comes from the shortened version of the word All-hallow-even, a day where nearly all European countries celebrated festivals akin to Samhain. This is the reason why Halloween is also recognized as All Hallows Eve. However Samhain is the festival that’s clearly the beginning of Halloween with a main part of the event to do with the understanding that this was the day the lines between the living and also the dead blurred.

Dressing Up

The facts about Halloween costumes come from this understanding that Samhain was a day when the veil between the worlds were thinner and that the living and the dead crossed paths. The Celtic Traditions where spirits of the departed were thought to be able to bring about disease and harm among people and also bring about destruction to plants. Dressing up in costumes was mainly to chase away evil and also people would dress in disguises and also masks to mimic the dead spirits. This was thought to trick the spirits that the people were really deceased and to avoid damage. This has now evolved into a pleasure filled practice with people not caring very much about how terrifying or dead they appear.

How Halloween Is Celebrated Nowadays – Pumpkins and Trick or Treating

Why are pumpkins linked with Halloween? Carving pumpkins is another ritual that originates, according to the facts regarding Halloween, from Celtic traditions. In Ireland families carved lanterns out of turnips and rutabagas to keep away evil spirits. When Irish families relocated to America they subsituted pumpkins as an alternative as they were much more conveniently available and also less difficult to carve.

In the old days during Halloween, people in Ireland would go from home to home begging for food contributions for a feast in the town center. Today, children dress up in costumes and go around the neighbourhood trick or treating, begging for sweets or cash.