The origins of Halloween, also known as
All Souls´Night, lie in the Celtic festival of Samhain, (a Gaelic
word meaning summer´s end) which marked the end of summer and the
harvest. Bonfires were lit, often to provide light for those bringing
in livestock from the fields or mountains to be slaughtered for
winter. On this day, the Celts believed that the door to the
underworld was opened, letting in spirits. They would hold a feast,
setting a place for any deceased relatives, as they were believed to
visit home on this day. Malevolent spirits entered the earthly realm
as well and people would dress in costume in order to confuse these
spirits. This evolved into the custom of visiting houses to collect
food for the feast while in costume, a precursor to
trick-or-treating.
I don´t know exactly when Halloween
became sanitized, commercialized and family friendly but a poem
written by the American Edith Wharton in 1903 seems to indicate that
it still retained its most sinister connotations around that time.
Read the first verse and judge for yourself.
by
Edith Wharton
A thin moon faints in the sky o’erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the
dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox
delays,
But forth of the gate and down the
road,
Past the church and the yews, to their
dim abode.
For it’s turn of the year and All
Souls’ night,
When the dead can hear and the dead
have sight.
I wonder if she had something like this
in mind.
By the way, if you´re a beginner and
would like to know how relatively easy it was to create the above collage, watch this space and I´ll show you....
