As time progresses we tend to over look things. We just sweep the meaining under the door and accept the results. We need to go back generations to find how these things started to discover the truth. However we tend not to...Halloween is no exception. I have always seen it as the most meaning less Holiday(not that there is anything wrong with it). I just never questioned it. I just saw it as a Holiday where people dressed up and gave away candy or where people try and scare others.
Recently I have learn the pass to it. It is just like any other thing were over time it has changes to make "better". It turns out that Halloween started out as a Celtic Holiday. They celebrated the end of the year(Nov 1) . Which if you think about it; it makes perfect sense. After the Great Harvest and then come the cold and ice what more perfect time. Now in this time period they would associate this with human death. And the Celts believed that the two worlds came together on the day before (Oct 31). So they would celebrate Samhein. During their celebration the Celts would wear costumes of dead animal heads and skin and danced around a fire.
Then Romans started to conquer Celtic territories. And there cultures started to merge. Two of the Romans festivals combined with Samhein. They were Feralia and Pomona. Feralia was a day of celebrating the dead. Pomona was a day for celebrating the Goddess of fruit and trees. Might be why apples are popular during the time of Halloween. Such as Carmel Apples, Cider, and the game where you bob for apples. Then Christianity started to have a huge influence over in this area. As they did they started to try and show how their religions are pretty close to try and convert them. They used some other techniques too...would rather not believe. They showed that they had a way of celebrating death. That is probably why All Saints' Day (Nov 1) and (Nov 2) is All Souls' Day. The word HALLOWEEN means All Hallows' Even.
It then progressed to the Halloween I know today through various means. The truth is sometimes people or groups try to be liked by too many people that they are either hated or they get over looked. I believe Halloween has out shadow the Christian Holiday's that follow the next fue days (All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day). It has turned to a day where people like free candy and scare people. It reminds me of another holiday Colubus Day. He was the one who discovered America(?). People will over look that other people were here first and just accept how things are. Not that is a popular holiday it is just wrong to give credit to people that have just added to an underlining idea.
source:http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=713&display_order=1&mini_id=1076
Recently I have learn the pass to it. It is just like any other thing were over time it has changes to make "better". It turns out that Halloween started out as a Celtic Holiday. They celebrated the end of the year(Nov 1) . Which if you think about it; it makes perfect sense. After the Great Harvest and then come the cold and ice what more perfect time. Now in this time period they would associate this with human death. And the Celts believed that the two worlds came together on the day before (Oct 31). So they would celebrate Samhein. During their celebration the Celts would wear costumes of dead animal heads and skin and danced around a fire.
Then Romans started to conquer Celtic territories. And there cultures started to merge. Two of the Romans festivals combined with Samhein. They were Feralia and Pomona. Feralia was a day of celebrating the dead. Pomona was a day for celebrating the Goddess of fruit and trees. Might be why apples are popular during the time of Halloween. Such as Carmel Apples, Cider, and the game where you bob for apples. Then Christianity started to have a huge influence over in this area. As they did they started to try and show how their religions are pretty close to try and convert them. They used some other techniques too...would rather not believe. They showed that they had a way of celebrating death. That is probably why All Saints' Day (Nov 1) and (Nov 2) is All Souls' Day. The word HALLOWEEN means All Hallows' Even.
It then progressed to the Halloween I know today through various means. The truth is sometimes people or groups try to be liked by too many people that they are either hated or they get over looked. I believe Halloween has out shadow the Christian Holiday's that follow the next fue days (All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day). It has turned to a day where people like free candy and scare people. It reminds me of another holiday Colubus Day. He was the one who discovered America(?). People will over look that other people were here first and just accept how things are. Not that is a popular holiday it is just wrong to give credit to people that have just added to an underlining idea.
source:http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=713&display_order=1&mini_id=1076
1 comment:
In one sense, I wonder if this is how all tradition, all history, works: we just keep adding to and merging ideas until the original meaning is forever lost in the mangled synthesis.
I don't know that this is right or wrong, but simply inevitable. Even today, for instance, I play the 1812 Overture on Christmas Eve (cannons booming about midnight). Why? Because the father of a former girlfriend did it. When he passed away, I continued it. Why did he do it? . . . I never asked him. It just seemed cool.
In this way, then, what was original is lost; what we practice is only the tail-end of a long lost telephone game. Definitions of words, the meanings of legends, the accounts of history--all a broken image of the facts. And if we can never know those facts, how do we decide what to keep and call "true"and what to discard?
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