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History Of Halloween Essay

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The History of Halloween Dressing up in costumes, trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins into funny faces. These traditions are part of Halloween, a holiday known for fun, games and of course candy. At least in this day and age, the excitement that the public feels for this undocumented holiday isn’t the same as it was 2,000 years ago. For the story of Halloween dates back thousands of years to a festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-in). A group of people known as the Celts celebrated it to mark the end of the harvest season. They lived where Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are today. Samhain began on November 1, but the celebrations began the night before, on October 31. Families would gather for big …show more content…

How it got its name is another story entirely the church gave Halloween its name when it changed the celebration of the Roman Festival of the Dead from February to November 1 a Church holiday known as All Saint's Day. Another way to say All Saint's was All Hallows because the term "hallows" means "holy people." The evening before the holiday, October 31 became known as All Hallows Eve, and the church service performed on that evening was called All Hallow e'en. The reason being, think along the lines of when people go to church on Christmas eve, Halloween was once seen, much like Christmas was and still is seen as a holy holiday. As for the history of trick or treating, or “guising” (from “disguising”), it began in the Middle-Ages, children and sometimes poor adults would dress up in costumes popular ones being ghosts and ghouls to scare evil spirits away, would go around door to door during Halloween begging for food or money in exchange for songs and prayers often said on behalf of the dead. This was called “souling” and the children were called “soulers”, again think Christmas and carols. But this year’s Halloween have its own new rules and traditions and as each generation cover their house in fake spiders and plaster zombies

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