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Halloween 2014: Britains most ancient traditional celebration / UK News

Halloween-Ancient-Tradition

Happy Halloween everyone ! Now getting to know This ancient and old Anglo-Saxon – Celtic tradition.

On October 31st, we celebrate Halloween,thought to be the one night of the year when ghosts, witches, and fairies are especially active.

The easy answer to this question is that no one really knows the origins of Halloween.

What we do know for sure is that Halloween is on the eve of a major Catholic festival, All Saints (1st November) and the eve of the pagan Celtic festival known as Samhain.

The three days between 31st October and 2nd November see pagan and Christian celebrations intertwined in a fascinating way and is a perfect example of superstition struggling with religious belief.

Currently, it is widely thought that Halloween originated as a pagan Celtic festival of the dead related to the Irish and Scottish Samhain, but there is no evidence that it was connected with the dead in pre-Christian times.

On the following page we will outline some of the facts, so you can decide for yourself, and join the debate, of the origins of Halloween.

Halloween 2014:History Of Halloween

Halloween-Ancient-Tradition-13

In the year 835 AD the Roman Catholic Church made 1st November a church holiday to honour all the saints. Although it was a joyous holiday it was also the eve of All Souls Day, so in Medieval times it became customary to pray for the dead on this date.

Another name for All Saints Day is ‘All Hallows’ (hallow is an archaic English word for ‘saint’). The festival began on All Hallows Eve, the last night of October.

The Celts believed that evil spirits came with the long hours of winter darkness. They believed that on that night the barriers between our world and the spirit world were at their weakest and therefore spirits were most likely to be seen on earth.

The Celts built bonfires to frighten the spirits away, and feasted and danced around the fires. The fires brought comfort to the souls in purgatory* and people prayed for them as they held burning straw up high.

In England, the day of fires became 5th November (Bonfire Night), the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot of 1605, but its closeness to Halloween is more than a coincidence. Halloween and Bonfire Night have a common origin they both originated from pagan times, when the evil spirits of darkness had to be driven away with noise and fire.

Halloween 2014:Halloween Customs

Trick 'r Treat

In Lancashire, ‘Lating’ or ‘Lighting the witches’ was an important Halloween custom. People would carry candles from eleven to midnight. If the candles burned steadily the carriers were safe for the season, but if the witches blew them out, the omen was bad indeed.

In parts of the north of England Halloween was known as Nut-crack Night. Nuts were put on the fire and, according to their behaviour in the flames, forecast faithfulness in sweethearts and the success or failure of marriages.

Halloween was also sometimes called Snap Apple Night, in England. A game called snap apple was played where apples were suspended on a long piece of string. Contestants had to try an bite the apple without using their hands. A variation of the game was to fix an apple and a lighted candle at opposite ends of a stick suspended horizontally and to swing the stick round. The object was to catch the apple between the teeth whilst avoiding the candle.

Many places in England combined Halloween with Mischief Night (celebrated on 4 November), when boys played all kinds of practical jokes on their neighbours. They changed shop signs, took gates off their hinges, whitewashed doors, and tied door latches.

Another tradition from which Halloween customs might have come from is a ninth century European custom, souling. It was a Christian festival where people would make house calls begging for soul cakes. It was believed that even strangers could help a soul’s journey to heaven by saying prayers, so, in exchange for a cake they promised to pray for the donors’ deceased relatives.

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