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Day and was to honor the dead. It was celebrated with big
bonfires, parades, and people dressing up as saints, angels and
devils.
But the spread of Christianity did not make people forget their
early customs. On the eve of All Hallows, Oct. 31, people continued
to celebrate the festival of Samhain and Pomona Day. Over the
years the customs from all these holidays mixed. October 31st
became known as All Hallow Even, eventually All Hallow's Eve,
Hallowe'en, and then - Halloween.
The Halloween we celebrate today includes all of these influences,
Pomona Day's apples, nuts, and harvest, the Festival of Sanhain's
black cats, magic, evil spirits and death, and the ghosts, skeletons
and skulls from All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day. Virtually all
present Halloween traditions can be traced to the ancient Celtic
day of the dead. Halloween is a holiday of many mysterious
customs, but each one has a history, or at least a story behind it.
The wearing of costumes, for instance, and roaming from door to
door demanding treats can be traced to the Celtic period and the
first few centuries of the Christian era, when it was thought that
the souls of the dead were out and around, along with fairies,
witches, and demons. Offerings of food and drink were left out
to placate them. As the centuries wore on, people began dressing
like these dreadful creatures, performing antics in exchange for
food and drink. This practice is called mumming, from which the
practice of trick-or-treating evolved. To this day, witches,
ghosts, and skeleton figures of the dead are among the favorite
disguises. Halloween also retains some features that harken back
to the original harvest holiday of Samhain, such as the customs of