by Aela Ajdinovic

Created on: October 09, 2009

Today Halloween has very little in common with the essential festivity celebrated by the Celts. It might seem strange, but Halloween did not bare the same name as it does today, nor was it celebrated in America. In the early beginnings it was celebrated by the old sacred tribe the Celts, who lived in today's England. It was celebrated on November 1 and called Samhain. The date of celebration is very important, since it represents the ending of one season and the beginning of another. It represented a complete change, the one that happened not only in the material world but also in the spiritual. The ancient Celts, the ancestors of today's Halloween believed that at the night of Samhain, the spirits would visit the earth one more time to see their loved ones. The festivity was some kind of welcoming party, the celebration of life as well as the celebration of the dead. The customs, which we practice today, do come from the time of Celts, but their meaning and purpose are quite different. People used to wear costumes and masks to hide from the bad spirits, and they used to burn huge bonfires to scare the evil spirits away.

After the arrival of the Romans, things started to change, and Samhain was lost. This stage did not last for a long time, since the celebration came back in a form of old-new holiday known as the All Hallow's Eve. This was now a Christian holiday, declared sacred by the Pope himself. This holiday already existed and was moved from the May 13 to the November 1. Therefore, the new holiday was a synthesis of something old and new. The most probable reason, why such action was taken was in order to gain their trust and try to convert the pagans to Christianity.

The next imposing question is how Halloween ever reached America. At the time of the first settlers, celebration of Halloween was forbidden, since the settlers were Puritan. The same case was in England, except off course for the countries like Ireland, where All Hallow's Eve was still considered as one of the most sacred holidays. So how did it come to America? Quite simple, when the Irish immigrants came to America, they brought Halloween along. The moment Halloween was brought to America, there appeared the question, which is even today difficult to answer. Is Halloween a holy or a secular holiday? Today, Halloween is considered as a secular holiday, and the customs we still perform to this very day symbolize some pagan rituals. When we dress up for the Halloween, we rarely ever think of the time when such customs were used to disguise mere mortals. Today, scary costumes are intended to scare people, and create gloomy and daunting atmosphere.

The beginnings of Halloween might seem a lot more different then the holiday we celebrate today, but some things remain the same. We might not be aware, but we do perform the custom of celebrating the ending of one season and the beginning of a new cycle, welcoming the good spirits.

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