Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic harvest festival of Samhain. The Celts believed the boundary between the living world and the spirit world became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits to cross over. Christians later incorporated aspects of Samhain into All Hallows' Eve, celebrated on October 31st. Over time, All Hallows' Eve evolved into Halloween with traditions like wearing costumes and trick-or-treating. Today, Halloween maintains folk traditions mixed with modern secular celebrations and superstitions.

1. HALLOWEEN
History
Folklore
Actuality

2. What is Halloween?
• Halloween is a secular holiday combining vestiges of traditional
harvest festival celebrations with customs more peculiar to the
occasion such as costume wearing, trick-or-treating.
• It takes place on October 31.

3. Meaning and Origin
• The name Halloween (originally spelled Hallowe'en) is a
contraction of All Hallows Even, commemorating Christian saints
and martyrs.
• The best available evidence indicates that Halloween originated
in the early Middle Ages as a Catholic vigil observed on the
eve of All Saints Day, November 1.
• It has become commonplace to trace its roots even further back
in time to a pagan festival of ancient Ireland known as Samhain

4. Folklore and customs of All Hallows
• The festival observed at this time was called Samhain. It was
the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year.
• The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than
any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able
to mingle with the living. During this time different rituals or
traditions were carried out to help the deaths.
• The Druids, who were their religious leaders, were the one in
charge of performing the rituals.

5. • Among the practices associated with Halloween during the
Medieval period were:
– The lighting of bonfires, evidently to symbolize the plight of souls
lost in purgatory.
– Souling, which consisted of going door-to-door offering prayers for
the dead in exchange for "soul cakes" and other treats.
– Mumming (or "guising"), a custom originally associated with
Christmas consisting of parading in costume

6. Evolution of Halloween
• Samhain became the Halloween we are familiar with when
Christian missionaries attempted to change the religious
practices of the Celtic people.
• Pope Gregory the First issued a now famous edict to his
missionaries concerning the native beliefs. The effects of this
policy were to diminish but not totally eradicate the beliefs in
the traditional Celtic gods.

7. • People continued to celebrate All Hallows Eve as a time of the
wandering dead, but the supernatural beings were now thought
to be evil.
• Subsequently, All Hallows Eve became Hallow Evening, which
became Hallowe'en.
• With the past of time the same customs used during the
ancient times became part of what nowadays we know as
Halloween.

8. Halloween Superstitions
• Halloween, a time of magic, also became a day of divination,
with a host of magical beliefs. These are some of them:
– If a person holds a mirror on Halloween and walks backward down the
stairs to the basement, the face that appears in the mirror will be
their next lover.
– Black cats.
– Walking under ladders.
– Breaking mirrors.
– Stepping on cracks in the road.

9. Halloween Nowadays
• Today Halloween is becoming once again and adult holiday or
masquerade, like mardi Gras. Men and women in every disguise
imaginable are taking to the streets and parading past
grinningly carved, candlelit jack o'lanterns, re-enacting customs
with a lengthy pedigree.

10. Links
• http://www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html
– The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows by Jack Santino
• http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/halloween/a/History-Of-
Halloween.htm
– A Quick Guide to the Origin & History of Halloween by David
Emery