Halloween

American and English Culture:
HALLOWEEN



1. Introduction

The name "Halloween" comes from All Hallows, or All Saints Day, traditionally celebrated by Christians on November 1st. The night of Halloween was called Hallows Eve. All Saints Day was dedicated to all of those saints who did not otherwise have a special day of their own. All Saints Day came into existence soon after PopeGregory I issued his famous edict of 601 A.D. concerning Pagan practices. If non-Christians worship a tree, he told his missionaries, then consecrate the tree to Christ and keep right on worshipping it. It was a brilliant strategy, and it almost worked. That edict is also why so many other Christian holidays also correspond exactly with older Pagan observances.The original name of Halloween was Samhain,and it was actually the New Year celebration for most of pre-Christian Europe. It was the day which stood "at the crack of time" between the old year and the new, included in neither year.Pagan traditions say that the walls between the world of the living and the world of the dead are at their thinnest on this day that is not a day, so the dead may walk and feast among the living with ease.Following the papal edict of Gregory I, when 7th Century missionaries started frantically looking for some sort of feast of the dead, they latched onto the All Saints idea. Actually, when you think about it, it's kind of a lame substitute for a feast of the dead (particularly when Samhain usually wound up as one hell of a party, no pun intended). That's undoubtedly why it didn't catch on verywell.Samhain is the major celebration of the Witch's year. On this night, the God of the Pagans, who willingly sacrificed Himself at Lugnasagh (August 1st) to ensure the bounty of the harvest and will be reborn into this world at Yule (winter solstice, on or about December 21st), is crowned King of the Dead.

2. What’s Halloween?

Halloween is an annual holiday observed on October 31. It’s celebratedin Anglo-Saxon countries, mainly in USA and too in Canada, Ireland and the UK. The expansive force of USA culture has been popular Halloween in other Western countries.

Halloween commonly includes activities such as trick or treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o-lantern, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scarystories, and watching horror films.

3. History

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was calledSamhain, the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle withthe living.
Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily parade around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.
Probablya better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.
Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a...