History of Halloween

The 2000-year-old Celtic harvest and New Year festival, Samhain, was celebrated on 1st of November. Celts usually lived in Ireland, United Kingdom and northern areas of France. This festival marked the end of pleasant summers and the beginning of bitter cold. These people believed in evil spirits and witchcraft and thought that they get loose on Earth and roam about on the night before New Year in search of preys and victims. Thus, they painted their faces and wear terrible costumes to frighten away these ghosts and witches so that they would not harm them and their cattle and crops. The inexplicability of certain natural occurrences gave rise to most of their fears and Druids and the Celtic priests cashed in the opportunity by claiming that they could master these spirits and even make predictions and foretell the future with their help.

By 43 AD, Romans took hold of the Celtic territory. When brought together, the social interaction between the two societies and the cultural and traditional influence of the societies over each other resulted in the amalgamation of Samhain, the harvest festival mentioned above, and two Roman festivals that were celebrated, one to please Pomona, Goddess of fruits and trees and other called Feralia celebrated to commemorate the passing of the dead. It is the festival associated to Pomona that gave rise to the custom of 'bobbing' apples on Halloween. Though, Christians tried to celebrate 1st November as the peaceful and serene All Saints' Day but soon the festivities of Samhain caught favor among the Christian youths and Halloween became the day of big bonfires, grand parades, costumes, trick-or-treating and Jack-o'lanterns and carved pumpkin décor.