Halloween
In speedy anticipation on Halloween I just have thought to write a little bit about this interesting and funny custom of which nobody seems to know something accurately in every detail, but everyone is looking forward to this old tradition.
So here I start: Halloween's origins date back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which is an area somewhere in Ireland. They celebrated it on the end of October, which markes the end of summer and the beginning of a dark and cold winter, which often was linked with death in early times. Already then, Druids believed that the ghosts of loved family members, friends, relatives and others come back to earth, because only at this time the boundaries between the living and the death world is open. To commemorate the ghosts the Celtic folk sacrificed different things and dressed themselves in costumes, which had the look of animal heads or skin.
After a while, the Celtic country was conquered by the Roman Empire and the Roman population was fascinated by the habit and adopted it. In the sixth century finally the former pope of Rome decided to flag this important day as a religious fest and called it "All Souls Day", which meant that also saints and martyrs were included. This naming was the meaningful step to spread this custom all over the world. After phrases like "All-hallows" or "All-hallowmas" or "All-hallows Eve" the popular vocable "Halloween" arised finally, which was accepted by different cultures.
Besides in the nineteenth century Irish immigrants came to America and distributed their rites (where it had found the biggest appeal ever and started the "trick or treat" tradition), while in the meantime through different believes and customs from diverse Europeans British people developed a similar American version of Halloween.
In addition to his nice story I have to say that before some time I had never reflected on Halloween and I never had the idea to celebrate it too. Neither I had thought about the whole history of the origin and that it's an Irish rite, nor I was interested in celebrating it. I only had the pumpkins, the sweets and the "trick or treat" custom in mind, when I thought about the rite. I had also never known, that there are different kinds of games in several countries like "snapping the apple", treasure hunts with candies or sweets as treasure, the card game where you can discover things underneath the cards and I never realized, that the typical trick "knock-a-dolly" occured due to Halloween.
Americans particularly love the custom. It's especially unbelievable, that the American folk is willing to spent so much money on Halloween, partly due to sweets and games. According to this link http://sethssources.wordpress.com/category/economics/ they spent in general more than seven billion dollars for this saint festival once a year. And the minority even dresses their pets. They are crazy I would say.
It's also very interesting when you know, that Halloween is celebrated in Spain and Latin countries too, because it's incredible that so many different cultures revel it. They honour by sacrificial offerings like flowers, sweets or lights, lying on tombs, the dead bodies, in hope to support them by finding their way back to the earth. However, no other countries celebrate Halloween with such a firm conviction as the Americans.
I think with this historical knowledge about the origin of Halloween, the spreading and the different customs, I will now follow this rite in a more friendly way. Nevertheless it's still the problem that in Austria Halloween isn't a big number yet. Too less people really celebrate it, which means that we have to work on our culture knowledge more intensely to really identify ourselves with the custom.
