Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts celebrated their New Year 1 November. 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 31 October, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
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Celts believed that these ghosts disrupted the world and that they helped the Celtic priests to prophesise about the future. These predictions were crucial as people were living in an intensely volatile natural environment so the prophecies provided much needed reassurance and comfort ahead of a long, dark winter. To commemorate the event, huge sacred bonfires were built to burn crops and animals as offerings to the gods. People wore costumes which often used animal heads and masks and they celebrated by trying to predict each others fortunes typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes.
During the four hundred years that the Romans ruled the Celts, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. These festivals were Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead and a day to celebrate Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. Pomona 's symbol was that of the apple which explains why apple-bobbing is a popular Halloween party game today. Around the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated 1 November as All Saints' Day, a time to honour saints and martyrs. This celebration was also referred to as All-hallows or All-hallowmas and the night before it became known as All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween, as we know it today.
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