This is a nice reminder - please make the time to read it…
What is Halloween?
Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31st. On this night, children dress up in different costumes and go door to door asking for candies (also known as trick or treating). Other activities that also take part in this custom are bonfires, costume parties, visiting haunting houses, playing pranks on one another, watching horror films and other Halloween related festivals. Pumpkins are
carved out for Halloween with faces and homes are decorated with ghostly and other evil images.
The Origins of Halloween:
Halloween Today = Ancient Celtic Practices + Roman and
Catholic Religious Rituals + European Folk Traditions
Celtic Origins:
The first Halloween event dates back to the time of the Celtics or ‘Celts’. They were a group of people occupying the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Northern France about 2,000 years ago.
The Celtic year began on November 1st with the festival of Samhain (sow-in). This day not only marked the end of summer and harvests, it signaled the beginning of the cold, dark winter, which was often associated with death.
They believed that on New Year’s eve, October 31st, the earth came into closest contact with the spirit world and that ghosts of the dead returned to the earth on that night. They also believed that the presence of these spirits facilitated the druids (their priests) in predicting the future, which served as a source of comfort
for them during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the night, the Celts built large bonfires at which crops and animals were burnt as sacrifices to their deities. They wore costumes to these bonfires, consisting mostly of animal heads and skins, so that the roaming ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits and not harm them.
read more here from the source link…http://www.alhudainstitute.ca/html/halloween.html
and a nice video presentation showing all in 1 go…
