Halloween  Happy Halloween Wishes
From 101lifeStyle.com
Samhain Celebrations:
Samhain Gaelic for "summer's end" was the most important Celtic Harvest festival held on October 31 - November 1, marking the end of the harvest and the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half". From the late 19th century however, the festival was popularized as the "Celtic New Year". Later in the 8th century, the date of Samhain was associated with the Catholic All Saint's Day (and later All Soul's Day) and the secular Gaelic customs associated with it along with the Catholic liturgical festival have influenced the customs that are practiced during Halloween today.
 According to Gaelic folklore, Samhain was celebrated over a course of several days and were influenced to some extent by the Festival Of The Dead. Bonfires played a large part in the Samhain festivities. Bonfires were lit and people would cast bones of slaughtered animals into its flames. People and their livestock would also walk between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual. Traditionally Samhain was the time to stock of the herds and grain supplies and decide which animals would need to be slaughtered in order for the people and livestock to survive the winter. This custom is still observed by many who farm and raise livestock because it is when meat will keep since the freeze has come and also since summer grass is gone and free foraging is no longer possible. With the bonfire burning, villagers would extinguish all other fires. Then each family lit its hearth from the common fire, bonding the whole village together.
Another Gaelic custom associated with Samhain prevalent in the 16th century was the custom of wearing masks and costumes to placate evil spirits. Turnips were hollowed and carved into candle lanterns which would be carried by children as they would go "guising" in costumes from door to door, offering entertainment in return for various treats. Divination of the events of the coming year was another prominent feature of Samhain. Celts used hazelnuts, symbols of wisdom, to foretell the future. Bobbing for apples, another traditional Samhain pastime, was a reference to the Celtic Emhain Abhlach, "Paradise of Apples," where the dead, having eaten of the sacred fruit, enjoyed a blissful immortality.
Oidhche Shamhna, the Eve of Samhain, was the most important part of Samhain. The Celts believed that this eve was a gap in time when this world and the Underworld came together, between the old and new years. Many customs of Oidhche Shamhna, were meant to honour the dead ancestors for whom villagers would leave their doors and windows open and welcome them into their homes. They would also put out food for them. Since all spirits were not friendly they would carve images of spirit guardians onto turnips and hang them to ward off evil spirits.
 In modern Ireland and Scotland, the name by which Halloween is known in the Gaelic language is still Oiche / Oidhche Shamhna. It is still the custom in some areas to set a place for the dead at the Samhain feast, and to tell tales of the ancestors on that night.
In parts of western Brittany, Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou, cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his 'cuckold' horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld. The Romans identified Samhain with their own feast of the dead, the Lemuria, which was observed in the days leading up to May 13. With Christianization, the festival in November (not the Roman festival in May) became All Hallows' Day on November 1 followed by All Souls' Day, on November 2. Over time, the night of October 31 came to be called All Hallow's Eve, and the remnants festival dedicated to the dead eventually morphed into the secular holiday known as Halloween. ********************************************* Custom Of Trick-O-Treat |
