Halloween Festival

By: Usharani Vairam
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:22:50
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History of Halloween, like any other festival's history is stimulated through civilization that has emerged through all ages from one generation to other generation and you can follow your previous generations as they did. Most of their innovation gets fuzzy with additions and alterations as this process goes on. It happens so slowly, straddling over so many ages, that we barely come to be familiar with about these deformations. At one point of time it leaves us puzzled,with its multihued faces. Digging more into its history assists to sieve out the facts from the fantasies which caught us unaware. The history of Halloween Day, as culled from the net, is being described here in this light. This is to help out those who are interested in washing off the superficial hues to reach the core and know things as they truly are. 'Trick or treat' may be an innocent fun to enjoy on the Halloween Day. But just think about a bunch of terrifying fantasies and the scary stories featuring ghosts, witches, monsters, evils, elves and animal sacrifices associated with it.

Halloween is a ceremonial celebrated on the night of October 31, most exceptionally by children dressing in diverse as well as striking costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets or money. It is notorious in most of the Western world, though most common in the United States, Puerto Rico, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, Irish, Scots and other refugees brought grown-up versions of the custom to North America in the 19th century. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in assorted northern European pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries and given a Christian interpretation. In Mexico November 1st and 2nd are celebrated as the Day of the Dead. In Great Britain and Ireland, the pagan Celts celebrated the Day of the Dead on All Hallows Day (1st November). To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore masks. When the Romans invaded Great Britain, they exaggerated the ritual with their own, which is both a celebration of the yield and of honoring the dead. Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult.

Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when the spiritual world can make contact with with the physical world and when magic is most effective. One story says that, on the day of Halloween, the ethereal feelings of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to hold for the next year. The Celts alleged all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, permitting the spirit world to amalgamate with the living. Naturally, the still-living did not want to be haunted. So on the night of October 31, villagers would snuff out the fires in their homes, to make them cold and detrimental. They would dress up in all modes of ghoulish costumes and raucously paraded around the neighborhood, being as caustic as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

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