Halloween is celebrated to the extreme these days with fancy dress costumes, trick or treating, wild parties and plenty of ghost stories and creepy goings on. But I wonder how many of you know about the origins of Halloween before it turned into a fancy dress fest?

Halloween goes as far back as 2000 years ago to the Celtic festival of Samhain. Halloween originates from the Celts in Northern France and Ireland celebrating their New Year on 1st November. The significance of this day was that it saw the end of harvest and summer and the beginning of winter, which was at the time associated with human death. On the eve of a new year Celts celebrated Samhain which was when they believed that ghosts of the dead returned to earth to cause havoc and damage crops. Bonfires were built in an attempt by the Celts to sacrifice crops and animals to lessen the effects of ghosts.

There were no fancy dress costumes like we see these days at the Samhain, but the Celts would wear costumes made up of animal heads and skins.

Once the Romans had conquered most of the Celtic land their festivals were combined with Samhain. So the passing of the dead was commemorated on one day, followed by a day of celebrating Pomona, the Roman goddess of trees and fruit. Now this is really interesting, Pomona is represented by a symbol of an apple which is probably where the great game apple bobbing came from!

Once the Christian influence was apparent in Celtic areas the pope at the time declared 1st November as All Saints Day. In today’s times some believe that the pope was attempting to put in place a Church sanctioned holiday as opposed to a Celtic festival of the dead. Later in AD 1000 the church made 2nd November All Souls Day which was a day meant for honouring the dead which was celebrated similarly to Samhain.

So there we have it, a brief history of Halloween. I hope that you found it informative so that when you are dressed up in your fancy dress costumes in a couple of weeks you’ll know where the tradition came from.