The Northern Light

This year on Oct. 31, kids will be trick-or-treating door to door or in public buildings. Adults will either be handing out candy, trick-or-treating with their kids or having a party to celebrate the evening. The one requirement for the evening is to be in costume.

Costumes and candy have not always been the highlight of Halloween. Halloween is derived from the merging of different holidays, including Celtic, Roman and Catholic festivals.

The Samhain (pronounced sow-in) festival was celebrated by the Celts more than 2,000 years ago. It was the end of the year for the Celts and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. Samhain, the Lord of the Dead, was thought to have assembled the spirits of the dead on this night. The spirits of the dead would come back to earth to haunt the living and destroy crops.

The Celts held large bonfires to sacrifice animals and crops to the dead in order to make Samhain more moderate. The Celts also wore masks during the festival to disguise themselves as spirits to bring less attention to themselves.

Druids, pre-Christian priests of the Celts, thought the festival was also the best time to foresee the future of the tribe and to make magic. Druid practices are closely linked to witchcraft, which might explain why witches are associated with Halloween today.

The Roman festival of Feralia was the day to commemorate the dead, which occurred around the end of October. The Roman festival of Pomona - for the goddess of orchards and the harvest - was celebrated on Nov. 1, after the harvest was stored for the winter. This celebration of the harvest coincided with the Samhain festival.

The combination of the Celtic and Roman festivities happened around the first century A.D., when the two cultures lived in the same villages in Europe and most of the British Isles, blurring the traditions and origins of the festivals.

When Christianity spread across the Roman Empire and further from the first to the fourth century, the church leaders assimilated pagan rituals to become Christian ceremonies. Nov. 1 was known as All Saints' Day or All Hallows, and Nov. 2 was known as All Souls' Day. The eve of All Hallows, All Hallows itself and All Souls' Day were referred together as Hallowmas. All Hallows Eve later became Hallowe'en, then Halloween, which is where we get the name we call it today.

In colonial America, only some regions celebrated All Saints' Day, and every colony understood the pagan rituals associated with the holiday.

After the American Revolution, Halloween parties were a common occurrence among the citizens. They were secular celebrations that took place in town buildings instead of churches. Although parties were popular among citizens of the U.S., there were too many variations in the time and types of celebrations to make Halloween an annual national holiday.

Famine in Ireland in the mid 19th century caused a flood of Irish immigrants to come to America. They did not bring many belongings, but they did bring their traditional Oct. 31 celebration. Another influence in making Halloween an American holiday came from Victorian publications in the second half of the 19 century. The periodicals described the old-world rituals of foretelling the future, but they were biased to a Victorian point of view and were used as a way to inform immigrants of American history.

At the turn of the 20th century, Halloween finally became a nationwide family celebration on the same scale as the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving.

The way Halloween is celebrated today may not be ancient, but it is definitely inspired by many old-fashioned customs and ceremonies.

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