In the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland,
summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was
called Samhain, the Celtic New year. One story says that,
on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died
throughout the preceding year would come back in
search of living bodies to possess for the next year.
It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife.
The Celts believed all laws of space and time
were suspended during this time, allowing the
spirit world to intermingle with the living.
So 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 all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily
paraded around the neighborhood,
being as destructive as possible in order
to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.
As belief in spirit possession waned,
the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins,
ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.
The custom of Halloween was brought
to America in the 1840's by Irish
immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine.
At that time, the favorite pranks in
New England included tipping over outhouses
and unhinging fence gates. The custom of
trick-or-treating is thought to have originated
not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century
European custom called souling. On November 2,
All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from
village to village begging for "soul cakes,"
made out of square pieces of bread with currants.
The more soul cakes the beggars would receive,
the more prayers they would promise to say on
behalf of the dead relatives of the donors.
At the time, it was believed that
the dead remained in limbo for a time after
death, and that prayer, even by strangers,
could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.
So, although some cults and devil worshippers
may have adopted Halloween as their favorite
"holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil
practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts
celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval
prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, it is
only as evil as one cares to make it.
1995, 1997 by Jerry Wilson
Some backgrounds and graphics courtesy of
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