The Origins of Halloween

The ancient Celtic peoples who inhabited England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Brittany celebrated their New Year's Day on what would be November 1st on our calendar. The period prior to the New Year, as the year wound down, was a time to consider the mystery of human death.

It was believed that on the last night of the year the lord of death, Samhain, allowed the souls of the dead to return to their homes. Souls that had died in sin, and in Celtic belief imprisoned in the bodies of animals, could be released through gifts to the lord of death, including human sacrifices.

 It was also thought that evil spirits, demons, ghosts; witches were also free to roam around this night and could be placated by a feast. They would also leave you alone if you dressed like them and thus appeared to be one of them.

Families would also extinguish their hearth fires on this evening to be re-lit from a common New Year's bonfire built on the hilltops, which was meant to symbolize the driving away of darkness and evil with the coming of the New Year. The jack-o-lantern as a means of scaring away evil and providing light may be a vestige of this custom