From Halloween to All Saints Day

I for one am glad that Halloween is over. It seems that this year it was dragged out for more than a week with all of the community festivities, different businesses putting on events and the local zoo doing their part. Don't get me wrong, I'm not down about any one event - they were all great. I guess I'm just worn out. However, our boys had an outrageously good time as well as dressing up in three sets of costumes.

In looking for some good in a notoriously evil holiday, I did come across the interesting origins of Halloween. It seems that before the Roman Empire invaded what today is Ireland, Britain and France, the Celts occupied the lands. The Celtic New Year was November 1 and around the end of October the weather started getting really miserable and folklore said that the harvest crops were cursed by dead souls roaming the earth. So they combined a New Year's celebration with festivals to drive off evil spirits all on October 31st. Druid priests called upon their gods and the pagans danced around in dead animal skins in what must have seemed like a highly confused and macabre scene.

Now along comes the Roman invasion and Pope Boniface IV decides to replace that Celtic mess with more Christian events. In doing so he designates November 1 as All Saints Day (Alhalowmesse in the original Middle English) to honor the saints and November 2 as All Souls Day to honor those who have passed on. So the day before Alhalowmesse is Alhalow-eve or Halloween. So there you go, a little bit of history courtesy of my source for this post, The History Channel.