Ancient pagans in Gaelic culture used Samhain to prepare for winter. The Samhain Festival served as a celebration of the ending of the harvest season. Ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead were at their weakest. During that critical time, the deceased would come back to life and cause chaos for the living. To appease wayward spirits, the Samhain Festival involved bonfires, masks, and costumes. According to the History Channel, to commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals 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.
Halloween Comes to America
In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
Modern day celebrations of Halloween include attending costume parties, carving Jack-O-Lanterns, bobbing for apples, visiting haunted houses, playing pranks, telling scary stories, watching horror films and trick-or-treating.
The concept of trick-or-treating involves costumed children going from door to door asking for treats. Treats almost exclusively involve candy of all shapes, sizes and flavors. When costumed children arrive at your door asking the customary "Trick or Treat," be sure to have candy at hand, because the lacking of treats could result in a trick being played on your property.
Foods and sweets associated with Halloween include candy apples, caramel apples, pumpkins, pumpkin seeds, candy corn, and special novelty candies. Halloween is produces the biggest number of candy sales. The Idea of transforming a pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern was brought to the United State by the Irish, who originally carved turnips and potatoes. A lack of turnips in the Americas brings you the popular pumpkin Jack-O-Lantern.
While not celebrated by all, diverse Halloween observances can be seen in North America, South America, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, continental Europe, Japan, and other parts of East Asia. Many Christians in America are now opting to do Harvest festivals to distance themselves from celebration of Halloween due to its pagan origins and historical practices which conflict with theology of the faith.
Colors -Black and orange are the traditional Halloween colors.
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