What is Hallowe’en? Where does the word come from? And why does it involve children dressing up as witches and extorting sweets with threats? We answer your questions.
The origins of the festival
Hallowe’en seems to have grown around the ancient Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half.
Samhain was in part a sort of harvest festival, when the last crops were gathered in for the winter, and livestock killed and stored. But the pagan Celts also believed it was a time when the walls between our world and the next became thin and porous, allowing spirits to pass through.
The practice of wearing spooky costumes may have its roots in that belief: dressing up as a ghost to scare off other ghosts seems to have been the idea.
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Related:
My daughter chose to costume herself as a “hunter zombie” which is a character from a video game called “Left For Dead” which the kids are playing nowadays. She was a hit at school.