THE ‘REAL’ ORIGIN OF HALLOWEEN
Halloween is round the corner, there are only 2 days left for one of the most popular celebration in North America and Europe to take place; and although in our country many do have the concept of the modern celebration, homogenization has not be influential enough to propagate the epidemic celebration in every Salvadorian home. However, the different believes around the origin of Halloween rose 220% this week between adults and children all over the world, perhaps to settle and debate on the different points of view of cultural or religious believers.
Although nowadays Halloween consists for the youngest on tricking and treating around streets to ask for enormous and delicious candy as an award to their fun and complexed costumes; the truth is that around the 800’s when this tradition arose it did not have that meaning but certain accepts were in fact similar to those practiced today.
Originally, the festival came from the Celtic holiday Samhain which means summer's end, and celebrated the end of fall and the beginning of winter. This day also marked the Celts' version of the New Year — and the time, they believed, when the dead came back to roam the earth.
Ancestors were honored, but evil spirits were warded off by lighting bonfires and wearing costumes to hide from them. Turnips carved with faces got placed in windows to scare off the unwelcome undead. People would go "a-souling," and in exchange for food and drink, pray for a household's dead relatives. In Scotland, spirits were impersonated by men wearing all white with veiled faces. Sound familiar?
The entire tradition was a clash between this Celt tradition and the Roman Catholicism tradition of Feralia which consisting in honoring their deaths – and which is still celebrated on November 2nd all around Christian nations, including ours – and which is now called All Saints Day. In the middle of the 19th century Irish immigrants brought Halloween to American and it expanded and was transformed to now produce over $2 billion for all candy producers in the United States.
Written by: Fabiola Wollants
