Alina Page
Originally, Halloween, also known as All Hallows’ Eve, was a Pagan holiday, which honored the dead on November 1st. It can be traced back to about 2,000 years to a pre-Christian Celtic festival called Samhain which means “summer's end” in Gaelic. The Celts believed that on this night the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, more than any other day of the year. People would gather and sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They’d light fires to honor the dead but also to keep them away from the living. Today, we don’t necessarily light fires for the dead but rather carve scary faces on jack o'lanterns and put a flame in them to set them on our front steps for decoration, or maybe for some, it’s their way of keeping the spirits away. However, Samhain was less about death or evil and more about the transition of seasons. Although there isn’t a direct connection between Halloween and Samhain, because they are so close together on the calendar, many scholars believe that they influenced each other into later combining the holiday that we celebrate.
Today, all traditions can be traced back to the ancient Celtic day of the dead. Trick-or-treating for instance, the wearing of costumes and going door to door getting treats, can be traced back to the Celtic period or even the first centuries of the Christian era. This was a time where it was thought that the souls of the dead were out around with witches and demons, and by leaving drinks and treats out, it would calm them. On the other hand, dressing in costumes and going door to door may go back to the practice of guising in which people would disguise oneself and go door to door asking for food. It can also be related to souling, which is a medieval custom on Hallowmas where poor people would knock on doors asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead. It was also a superstition that ghosts could disguise themselves as humans and go door to door asking for food. If you turned them away, you’d face the risk being haunted or cursed by the spirit. Another myth was that by dressing up as a ghoul you could trick the evil spirits into thinking you were one of them, therefore they wouldn’t try to take your soul.
Halloween, wasn’t always meant for little kids to dress up and go door to door getting candy, so was the evolvement of this holiday to what it is today, for the better? In some ways, you could say yes. The holiday that it is today is fun; children get free candy, and it’s a day where they can dress up to be anything they want to be. We watch scary movies on television and get told scary stories that we know, deep down, are not real. We made a day that was meant to be about the transition of seasons and that the transition, at least metaphorically speaking, was a bridge to the world of the dead, into a day of getting candy from strangers. It became a day that has nothing to do with seasons except the fact that it takes place in the fall, and a day that has nothing to do with the bridge to the world of the dead but rather the scary stories told through voice and film.
Every year, the more each generation before us dies out, the meaning of this holiday and many others slowly die out. We don’t learn about the meaning and originality about this holiday or any other for that fact in school, we hear about them through stories growing up, and even those we might not believe because they aren’t told as history, but rather only just a story.
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