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| Did You Know That The Name Halloween.......... The name Halloween is really the corruption of the Catholic name All Hallows Eve.The Romans took the celtic holiday and made it one of their religious holidays. All Hallows Day or All Saints Day is a day of observance in honour of Catholic Saints. So that's where the name comes from. Now back in the 5th century BC, the Celtic belief was that on the 31st October, the last day of summer, and the last day of the old year, (Celtic New Year was November 1st) all the laws of space and time were suspended, and the spirit world was allowed to mingle with the living world, and those who had died in the previous year, left their graves and were able to search for bodies to inhabit as they believed this was the only way to have an after life. The celts would extinguish their fires in their homes to make them cold and inhospitable. Then they would dress up as dreadful creatures and go around breaking things and playing tricks to scare the spirits away. |
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| The Giving Of Treats.............. The giving of treats on Halloween originated in Europe in the middle ages, when early christians would go from village to village begging for soul cake on November 2nd. This was called souling. Soul cakes were square pieces of bread with currants in it. For every piece of soul cake, they would offer up a prayer for any dead relatives of the family, who, they believed hung in limbo for a certain amount of time after they were dead. The more soul cake given, the more prayers were said. The prayers, even of strangers, were believed to help them make their way to heaven. |
| The story of Jack-o-lanterns.............. The story, an Irish one, tells of how Jack, a drunk and a trickster, managed to trick the devil into climbing a tree. While he was up the tree Jack carved a cross on the trunk of the tree, so the devil couldn't get back down. Jack made him promise that if he let him down, never would the devil try to tempt him again. When Jack died he wasn't allowed into heaven because of his evil ways. Nor was he allowed into hell because he had tricked the devil. So the devil gave him an ember to light his way through the frigid dark and so it would burn longer he put it in a hollowed out turnip. There you have the legend of how the Irish began to use turnip jack-o-lanterns on Halloween. Later, when Irish immigrants went to America, they discovered that pumpkins were much more plentiful than turnips so the American Jack-o-lanterns were made from pumpkins with a glowing ember inside of it. |
| So What Does It All Mean..................... It means the different customs have all come together over the centuries to form the way we celebrate halloween today. The Irish Jack-o-lantern folklore, the Celtic belief in dressing up in ghastly costumes, playing tricks and being destructive to frighten away the spirits, and the Christian belief in paying for prayers with soul cakes. Put them together & you have our present day celebrations of dressing up as ghosts and goblins, the houses decorated with Jack-o-lanterns to light our way, and us crying out to the people................................. |
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