Halloween

It was a beautiful autumn night. I was walking home from work and heard a noise. What was that? Just evening noise.

Was that a ghost I just saw? A witch? Are my eyes deceiving me? A goblin! Frankenstein! Dracula!

"Trick or Treat!"

I relaxed. Halloween.

I remember trick or treating when I was a young child. There was one house on my street that everyone was afraid to go into. An elderly lady lived there by herself. For some reason we thought that she was a witch.

In hindsight I'm sure she was a nice lady. Nobody in the neighborhood knew anything about her, even the adults. If they did, nobody said anything. I guess Halloween magnified that which we knew little about.

Maybe that nice lady, the one nobody knew much about, was an unintentional symbol for this holiday. She represented a fear within our minds. We gave her a superstitious biography.

How did this holiday start? I did a bit of Internet surfing and this is want I learned.

The name Halloween refers to the Christian holiday, All Saints Day (November 1st ), also known as All Hallows Day. The word hallow means holy. Halloween is a corruption of the words Hallows Eve. It is interesting to note that the holiday starts the evening before. This is in homage to the Eastern Orthodox church that uses a lunar calendar (based on the cycles of the moon) as do the Jewish, Chinese, and other calendars of other cultures.

All Saints Day honors saints, those that have done good deeds. How does this relate to goblins, witches, and monsters?

Our journey begins in Europe. Ireland and the fascinating Celtic culture is the birthplace of the Halloween holiday. October 31st was the last day of summer for the Celtics.

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain,

Samhain is the word for November in the Irish language. . . the first three nights of this month, the festival marking the ending of the summer season. Elements of the festival may continue in the traditions of All Souls' Day and Halloween.

The Celtics, as were and are many cultures, were superstitious. They believed that the spirits of those that died in the previous year look for a new body to inhabit on Halloween. From wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm.