The History of Halloween

Hello Blog Followers,

In case you were wondering while you celebrate this amazing holiday known as Halloween I thought I would fill you in a bit. I did a little bit of surfing on the web and this is what I found from my favorite source, “Wikipedia.”

Some history:

Can you believe Halloween has origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain, from the Old Irish samain, possibly derived from Gaulish samonios? The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient Celtic pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Celts believed that on October 31st, now known as Halloween, the boundary between the living and the deceased dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, into which the bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks being worn at Halloween goes back to the Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them, in Scotland for instance where the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white.

Origin of name:

The term Halloween, originally spelled Hallowe’en, is actually shortened from All Hallows’ Even ("All Hallows' Eve"). Eve is an abbreviation of even, an older word for evening. Halloween gets -een as a result of syncopation of even to e'en, from the Old English term eallra hālgena ǣfen meaning "all saints' evening", as it is the eve of "All Hallows’ Day", which is now also known as All Saints’ Day.

All the above information was obtained from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween.

My teachers all hate this site, but I truly believe it is a great resource.
If you have any different information feel free to comment.

Jennifer