Dear Friend,
Another round of exhaustive research on your behalf has uncovered all the things that you've ever wanted to know about Halloween but were afraid to ask! I'm sure many of you have asked "What's the deal with this holiday anyway? Who thought it up and why do we still dress up our children and parade them around in the streets while having them beg for foods that has absolutely no nutritional value?" Or maybe it's just me who wondered that but either way I've done the investigating and found the answers for you!
How Halloween Got Started
Halloween's origins go all the way back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).
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Two thousand year ago the Celts; (who lived in what is now Ireland, England, and Northern France) celebrated their new year on November 1. That day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter.
Celts believed that on the night before the New Year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
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To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and other things as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes.
When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
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