by Gianni Truvianni

Created on: November 03, 2008

Halloween, a day of fright, folklore, goblins and above all fun for all those who are of a mind to simply enjoy themselves by letting loose their imagination however many may ask what is the history behind this holiday that has come to be celebrated through out the world? First off all we might ask what are the origins of the name Halloween and what if any meaning does it have?

Regarding the origins of the word Halloween, the answer is a simple one. It all started many centuries ago when there was a Catholic holiday called "All Martyr's Day"; celebrated on May 13 however it came to be that the date of this holiday was changed to the 1st of November while the name transformed to All Saint's Day". This change prompted that October 31, the day before came to be known as "All Hollow's Evening". As one can now observe "Halloween" is the short form of these two words, put in to one.

This explains the name Halloween however what about the rest? Where did it came about that people took to putting on customs in an attempt to frighten others? Well the explanation to this lies in Ireland; as it was there and according to the calendar of the Celts that the 1st of November was the first day of the year which made the 31st of October the last day. Tradition had it that on this last day of the year which the Celts referred to as Samhain; the line that separated the living from the dead all but disappeared; making it possible for the souls of the dead to intermingle with the living. However the souls of the dead contacted the living with evil intensions. These being to posses their bodies so they might come back to the world of the living, thus escaping from the spiritual world. It was secure in their believe that ancient Celtics felt the need to put on costumes of fright which they felt would surely ward off those evil spirits which were bound to attempt to posses their bodies.

In a way one could see that this to the Celtics which eventually became a tradition was not really so much a matter of having fun but a form of saving their souls and bodies; therefore it was with this in mind that they also went about their neighborhoods making as much noise as possible. Now in the 21st century, we of course can think of this is as being silly but to the Celts it was anything but as it sometimes happened that after Samhain; a person was even killed by those near him or her who believed the person they were killing was no longer the person they had known but a body inhabited by an evil

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