Kendrix Halloween writing

List of things you noticed during halloween:

Scariness

Camps/trips

Festivals/celebrations

Costumes

Scary Decorations

Pumpkin heads (jack-o-lanterns)

Trick Or Treat

Lollies

Scary masks , Masks

Horror Stories

Scary Movies

I think halloween is about lollies and trick or treating. I think it is just a day when people dress up in scary costumes . I’ve never heard any stories or reasons why there is a halloween day. My guess is that Halloween originated when someone died that night, and his/her name might of related to the word Halloween.

But after learning more about Halloween, I now know that, Halloween has many different meanings in different cultures. In the ancient times, the celts had their own celtic calendar. Which was split in half with a light half and a dark half. On the start of the dark half there was an event called Samhain (sel-win), it was a harvest festival. The harvest festival meant the peoples food was ready to gather. On that day the veil between the spirits and the real world could be crossed. If a human crossed into the spirit world, they could be trapped in there, forever. The people would stay inside to be safe. The harvest time was scary because they would not know if the food they had would supply them through the winter, they might of died of hunger.

Lemuria was on May 13th, on that day people would pour the milk on graves to stop them from rising. They believed that the dead will rise. The christians changed it to all-saints day. All Saints’ day on May 13th was moved down to November 1st. They moved it so it could drain the life out of Pagan samhain.  All-saints day name changed to all-hallows day. Then people started calling samhain all-hallows evening, because it was the day before all-hallows day. After, All Hallows day,’ name was turned into Halloween day.

They made november 2nd, All-souls day. All-souls day was made to honour the dead people.   Priests would ask for christians to pray for the people in purgatory. So some people would ask a church for soul cakes, in return they would pray for the spirits in Purgatory. Purgatory was a place in between hell and heaven. Trick or treating might of came from this day because of the kids asking for the soul-cakes. If the spirits in purgatory got enough prays they would fly up into heaven. Purgatory was a described as a fiery place, but still not as bad as hell.

From doing this research, I have found out that Halloween is not just a day of treats and scary costumes. I’ve learnt that Halloween is actually very complicated and originated a long time ago. October 31st was originally a Celtic harvest festival called, Samhain.