HALLOWEEN

HistoryFolklore

Actuality

What is Halloween?

• Halloween is a secular holiday combining vestiges of traditional harvest festival celebrations with customs more peculiar to the occasion such as costume wearing, trick-or-treating.

• It takes place on October 31.

Meaning and Origin

• The name Halloween (originally spelled Hallowe'en) is a contraction of All Hallows Even, commemorating Christian saints and martyrs.

• The best available evidence indicates that Halloween originated in the early Middle Ages as a Catholic vigil observed on the eve of All Saints Day, November 1.

• It has become commonplace to trace its roots even further back in time to a pagan festival of ancient Ireland known as Samhain 

Folklore and customs of All Hallows

• The festival observed at this time was called Samhain. It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year.

• The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living. During this time different rituals or traditions were carried out to help the deaths.

• The Druids, who were their religious leaders, were the one in charge of performing the rituals.

• Among the practices associated with Halloween during the Medieval period were:– The lighting of bonfires, evidently to

symbolize the plight of souls lost in purgatory.

– Souling, which consisted of going door-to-door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for "soul cakes" and other treats. 

–Mumming (or "guising"), a custom originally associated with Christmas consisting of parading in costume

Evolution of Halloween

• Samhain became the Halloween we are familiar with when Christian missionaries attempted to change the religious practices of the Celtic people.

• Pope Gregory the First issued a now famous edict to his missionaries concerning the native beliefs. The effects of this policy were to diminish but not totally eradicate the beliefs in the traditional Celtic gods.

• People continued to celebrate All Hallows Eve as a time of the wandering dead, but the supernatural beings were now thought to be evil.

• Subsequently, All Hallows Eve became Hallow Evening, which became Hallowe'en.

• With the past of time the same customs used during the ancient times became part of what nowadays we know as Halloween.

Halloween Superstitions

• Halloween, a time of magic, also became a day of divination, with a host of magical beliefs. These are some of them:– If a person holds a mirror on Halloween

and walks backward down the stairs to the basement, the face that appears in the mirror will be their next lover.

– Black cats.–Walking under ladders.–  Breaking mirrors.– Stepping on cracks in the road.

Halloween Nowadays

• Today Halloween is becoming once again and adult holiday or masquerade, like mardi Gras. Men and women in every disguise imaginable are taking to the streets and parading past grinningly carved, candlelit jack o'lanterns, re-enacting customs with a lengthy pedigree.

Links

• http://www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html– The Fantasy and Folklore of All

Hallows by Jack Santino

• http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/halloween/a/History-Of-Halloween.htm– A Quick Guide to the Origin & History of

Halloween by David Emery