Halloween is one of America’s most popular holidays however it’s not all fancy dress and candy. For the countries who observe this autumnal celebration. Halloween represents a time of superstition and the paranormal as the nights grow darker and winter closes in. Increasingly it seems that this ghostly holiday is also a time for sugar-coated abundance with one-quarter of America’s annual confectionary sales occurring around Halloween.
However, it has not always been this way. So where did this peculiar festival originate?
Although the word Halloween is a contraction of the Christian observance of All Hallows Eve hallowed meaning holy. It is widely believed that many of the traditions associated with Halloween can be traced back to ancient festivals. In particular, it is the two-thousand-year-old pre-Christian Celtic festivals of the south.
The night of the thirty first of October. So in marked the start of the Celtic year. It was the end of summer and the harvest season and the beginning of darkness and the cold. Indeed the word sound comes from the old Irish for summers and. Historically it was widely observed throughout Ireland Scotland and the Isle of Man. An important part of the celebrations was the lighting of special bonfires.
As sarin was regarded as a time of year when the boundary between this world and the otherworld was at its thinnest. The bonfires were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers. Due to the proximity of the other world. The counts believed that the souls of dead family members revisited their homes on Selwyn as such lavish hospitality was provided places at feast tables were set for them and offerings of food were left.
Nuts and apples were popular. The prevalence of these foodstuffs can still be seen today in the same traditions of apple bobbing and the roasting of nuts. A mystical race comparable to fairies or Elves are known as the issue was also thought to walk more actively than usual amongst the living on sound.
This meant that guiding namely the tradition of dressing up in costume was practiced because of its effectiveness at disguising oneself from the occasionally fearsome she. It has been suggested that in order to conceal one’s identity ashes taken from the sacred bonfire may have been used to blacken participants’ faces. more
