HALLOWEEN
(not just an American holiday)

Originally, Halloween was called "All Hallow's Eve", and was simply a festival of the spirits celebrated on the eve of "All Hallows Day" (also called All Hallowmas, All Saint's Day, and All Soul's Day).

The ancient Celtics called the festival "Samhain" to celebrate the onset of winter and the beginning of the Celtic New Year ("Samhain" means "end of summer"). Samhain was a solar festival marked by a sacred fire and fire rituals during the height of the Druids, the priestly caste of the Celtics.

The layer between the worlds of living and the dead was believed to be at its thinnest point during this period, making communication between the living and the dead much easier. The Celtics believed all laws of time and space were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. They believed that on the eve of the Samhain, the souls of the dead freely roamed the land of the living. In addition, werewolves, warlocks, and witches, were believed to be out and at the peak of their supernatural powers.

On the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in fancy costumes and noisily paraded around the neighbourhood in order to frighten away lost spirits. It soon became a night of trick-or-treating by children, and adults dressed in fun costimes of fantasy.

The next day, Samhain, the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source; a fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.

In other parts of Ireland, the festival was known as "Samhein", or "La Samon", the Feast of the Sun. Samhein marked the third and final harvest, and the storage of food for the winter.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840s by Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine. In the roaring 1920s, Halloween parties were all the rage. Towns would have town dances, social club gatherings, and a variety of decorations followed suit.

TRICK OR TREAT!

The custom of trick or treating probably has several origins. An old Irish practice involved going door to door to collect money, breadcake, cheese, eggs, apples, and the such, in preparation for the festival of St. Columb Kill. Another was the begging for soul cakes, or offerings, in exchange for promises of prosperity or protection against bad luck.

JACK-O-LANTERN HISTORY

The Jack-o-Lantern custom is believed to come from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a joker and trickster, tricked the Devil into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the Devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entry to Heaven, because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the Devil. Instead, the Devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

So, the Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns". But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips (and probably alot easier to carve). So the Jack-O-Lantern in America became a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with a candle instead of an ember.