Halloween is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints.
Halloween activities include, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.
Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, more typically linked to the Celtic festival.
The name is derived from Old Irish and means roughly summer end. A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf.
The young children on the right bob for apples. A couple in the center play a variant, which involves retrieving an apple hanging from a string.
The couples at left play divination games.The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the lighter half of the year and beginning of the darker half, and is sometimes regarded as the Celtic New Year.
The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits to pass through. The family ancestors were honoured and invited home whilst harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks.
Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces. Samhain was also a time to take stock of food supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores.
Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. All other fires were doused and each home lit their hearth from the bonfire. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames. Sometimes two bonfires would be built side by side, and people and their livestock would walk between them as a cleansing ritual.
Another common practise was divination, which often involved the use of food and drink.
The name Halloween and many of its present day traditions derive from the Old English era.
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