We all have heard of Halloween, but do you know how it came to be. I’m not so sure my self and can’t wait to learn the deeper meaning behind this spooky holiday. As always if you’re interested or have been wondering about it (because it’s coming up). Keep on reading, you won’t regret it.

  Halloween or Hallowe’en Is a contraction of “All Hallows’ evening” also known as allhalloween, all hallows eve, and Saint’s eve. Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became one. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. To celebrate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfire, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic gods. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, mostly consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

 Jump to Halloween coming to America. The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the hard Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians came together, a different American version of Halloween began to surface. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing. Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money (I’m not sure who was asking for money, I’ve never actually heard of that, but I guess it was a thing back in the day). A practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Fun fact: young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

 I just scratched the surface of what Halloween truly is and its origins. If your more interested in this topic leave a comment, and I may do a more in-depth blog about Halloween. That’s all for now over and out!