They Called it Samhain
By: Catalina Zárate Osorio 10A
Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31. Nowadays we celebrate Halloween dressing up in costumes and going house to house asking for candies -also known as “trick-or-treating”-. The celebration has a community and neighborly get-together focus leaving behind the ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft topics most of the time. The most common way to celebrate this day is by Halloween parties for both children and adults; these parties are focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes. Even though this information may seem really normal to you, it was not always like this. The origin of Halloween comes from years back in time, with different activities, different beliefs, and of course a different name.
It all started 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France; here the Celts, who were a collection of tribes in central Europe, used to celebrate the New Year on November 1. This day was the end of summer and the beginning of the cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. This is why they celebrated a festival called Samhain on the night of October 31. During the event, Celtic priests built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. They also wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.
After the Roman empire conquered the majority of Celtic territory two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. In first place was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. Then it was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple which explains some of the traditional games with apples that we have nowadays on Halloween.
After Romans decided they will honor Christianity and some of their beliefs, the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day also known as Day of the Dead, a day to honor the deceased. The day was celebrated similar to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. This day was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas. Later, November 1 was named All Saints’ Day, a day to honor all the dead baptized Catholics. Both very similar but one was focused more on religion. Taking into account these two celebrations, October 31, the day of the Samhain festival, changed its complete meaning and name. It was celebrated because it was the evening before All Saints’ Day and Day of the Dead; It was the opening festival for the next two days of celebration. It used to be called All Hallows Eve, but later it became known as Halloween.