So, to pay homage to the dead, people gathered to light bonfires, offer sacrifices, and dress up in costumes made from animal skins. It also helped to ward off unwanted visitors. Moreover, food was left on tables outside to satiate these spirits.
All you need to know. As time passed, people modified the festival and started dressing up as ghosts, demons and other creatures to perform antics in exchange for food and drink in the Middle Ages.
This custom came to be known as mumming and is considered an antecedent of trick-or-treating. In Scotland, young people participated in a similar tradition called guising - where they dressed up in costumes to go around the neighbourhood singing or performing tricks in exchange for offerings like fruits, nuts or coins. However, in the US, it is believed that Irish and Scottish communities revived the Old World traditions of guising in the early 20th century.
However, the custom got firmly established in the popular culture in , after it was depicted in the Peanuts comic strip. Today, Halloween and the tradition of trick-or-treating is celebrated by many. Moreover, Halloween is the second-largest commercial holiday in the US. Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31, primarily in western countries, to mark the eve of the Christian feast of All Hallows' Day Feast of All Saints , observed in honour of all the saints of the church.
Therefore, it was on the boundary night between summer and winter that the Celts celebrated Samhain, when they burnt huge bonfires dedicated to their deities and prayed to protect themselves from evil spirits during the coming winter. It is believed that this Samhain tradition, with pagan roots, eventually got Christianised as All Hallow's Day, while other academics believe that the tradition began originally as a Christian holiday.
In many of the western countries where the tradition spread, it evolved as a secular celebration where people engage in joyous celebrations to mark the age-old tradition against spirits.
The Celts — who lived 2, years ago mostly in an area that now lies in northern France, the United Kingdom, and Ireland — believed that on the boundary night between this summer and winter period, the limit between the worlds of the living and the dead are blurred.
They believed that on the night of October 31, the ghosts of the deceased returned to the world, which eventually became a convenient date for the festival since the Celts celebrated their new year on November 1. All you need to know. Halloween originated with an ancient Celtic festival where people lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off ghosts. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.
By the s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between and , the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration.
In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats. Thus, a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movies have a long history of being box office hits. A sequel to that—"Halloween Kills," the twelfth film in the "Halloween" franchise overall—was released in The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits.
The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes.
To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. We avoid crossing paths with black cats , afraid that they might bring us bad luck.
This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages , when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into black cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians , who believed that triangles were sacred it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.
Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it.
In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace.
In some versions of this legend, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last. Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband. Other rituals were more competitive.
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