Another Samhain related thread....

[Merrie]

If anyone has information, or just a really good source on the roots and origins of halloween, it would be much appreciated. My religion teacher tried to tell her class that halloween ACTUALLY ORIGINATED as a christian holiday and she said it was funny how so few people knew the real origins...
Something there didn't seem quite right to the quiet unassuming little witchling she doesn't know she has...She's going to tell us all about it nearer to the date, and I would like to be prepared...I don't want to argue any points I'm not sure of, and If she's right, I won't make a peep. I just want to be sure...
Thanks much in advance!

[Maggie]

Originally posted by Merrie
If anyone has information, or just a really good source on the roots and origins of halloween, it would be much appreciated. My religion teacher tried to tell her class that halloween ACTUALLY ORIGINATED as a christian holiday and she said it was funny how so few people knew the real origins...
Something there didn't seem quite right to the quiet unassuming little witchling she doesn't know she has...She's going to tell us all about it nearer to the date, and I would like to be prepared...I don't want to argue any points I'm not sure of, and If she's right, I won't make a peep. I just want to be sure...
Thanks much in advance!

Try this site--

www.neopagan.net/Contents.html

It's Isaac Bonewits website, and he's got several things on the origin of Halloween. As to what your teacher means, it depends on what she means by it originating as Christian. The holiday is pre-Christian, but the name does come from All Hallow's Eve, meaning the night before All Hallows Day on Nov 1 which is a church holiday........

Regards,

Maggie

[Ball-Bhreac Ròn]

Samhain originated as the Celtic new year, centuries before Christianity was even thought up. I was on or around the 31st October (remember the Celts didn't have a detailed calendar system like we do, although they were pretty accurate!) because this was when the last (last) of the harvests was gathered in, and it was seen as a 'new start'. They also reckoned that this was a very magickal night of the year, as the Celts reckoned their days from sunset to sunset. On the sunset of October 31st, the old year had just ended, but the new year hadn't yet begun, not until sunrise (wait, that doesn't make much sense. Anyway, on with the explaining...). This timeless evening wsa seen as a time when the veil between this world and the next was torn thin, and spirits began to cross over into our world. Hence all the magick.

This is about the actual origins, I'm sure I've missed some things out, does anyone want to carry on...?

[GoddessofWisdom]

(Ancient Origins, Modern Traditions, and Evolution of a Holiday)



Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

Information from:
http://www.historychannel.com/cgi-bin/frameit.cgi?p=http%3A//www.historychannel.com/exhibits/halloween/main.html

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Next to Christmas, Halloween is the most commercialized celebration in the United States and Canada. This ancient festival originated far from North America however, and centuries before the first European set foot on the continent.
The ancient Druids who inhabited what we now call Great Britain placed great importance on the passing of one season to the next, holding "Fire Festivals" which were celebrated for three days (two days on either side of the day itself).

One of these festivals was called Samhain (pronounced Sha-Von) and it took place on October 31 through to November 1. During this period, it was believed that the boundaries between our world and the world of the dead were weakened, allowing spirits of the recently dead to cross over and possess the living.

In order to make themselves and their homes less inviting to these wayward spirits, the ancient Celts would douse all their fires. There was also a secondary purpose to this, after extinguishing all their fires, they would re-light them from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning at Usinach, in the Middle of Ireland.

Samhain was considered to be a gateway not only from the land of the dead to the land of the living, but also between Summer and Fall/Winter. For the Druids, this was the last gasp of summer (it was also the Celtic New Year), so therefore they made sure it went out with a bang before they had to button down for the winter ahead.

They would dress up in bizarre costumes and parade through their villages causing destruction in order to scare off any recently departed souls who might be prowling for bodies to inhabit, in addition to burning animals and other offerings to the Druidic deities. It is also a popular belief that they would burn people who they believed to be possessed, but this has largely been debunked as myth.

This yearly festival was adopted by the Roman invaders, who helped to propagate it throughout the rest of the world (and at that time, the Roman Empire was the world). The word "Halloween" itself actually comes from a contraction of All Hallows Eve, or All Saint's Day (November 1), which is a Catholic day of observance in honour of saints.

This tradition was later brought to the North American continent by Irish immigrants who were escaping the Potato Famine in their homeland. In addition to the festival itself, the immigrants brought several customs with them, including one of the symbols most commonly associated with Halloween -- the Jack 'O Lantern.

According to Irish folklore, there once lived a man named Jack who was known for being a drunk and a prankster. One night Jack tricked the devil into climbing a tree, and quickly carved an image of a cross on the trunk, trapping the devil. Jack then made him promise that, in exchange for letting him out of the tree, the Devil would never tempt him to sin again. He reluctantly agreed, but was able to exact his revenge upon Jack's death. Because of his mischevious ways in life, Jack was barred from entering heaven and because of his earlier trick, he was also barred from hell. So he was doomed to wander the earth until the end of time, with only a single ember (carried in a hollowed out turnip) to warm him and light his way.

In Ireland, they originally also used turnips for their "Jack Lanterns", but upon arriving in the new world, they discovered that pumpkins were abundant and easier to carve out.

SBB, October 1999


Information from:
http://www.tartans.com/halloween.html

[gunner]

thanks very much for the tartans.com url, i think i'll registering and spending a bit of time there as well as here.

[GoddessofWisdom]

Originally posted by gunner
thanks very much for the tartans.com url, i think i'll registering and spending a bit of time there as well as here.


No problem gunner


I'm not a religious person but I do enjoy studying religions and I hate it when Christians are give all the credit for the holidays when every single one of them was started first by the celts or some other nature based faith.


so I figured if she could print out the one from historychannel.com
the teacher would have no way to contest the validity especially if she prints it out from the website itself