Halloween Through History

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Every year we celebrate a holiday at the end of October involving costumes, candy, and pranks. Can you guess which holiday I am talking about? Of course you can! Halloween is one of the biggest holidays of the year ,second only to (in my opinion) Christmas. We follow many strange traditions on Halloween, but why? Why do we dress up? Why do we get candy? And what is the meaning of the phrase “ Trick or Treat”?

In order to explain, this we need to go back to the very beginning of this creepy holiday. Long ago, a people known as the Celts celebrated a holiday they called Samhain. The Celts lived two thousand years ago in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Northern France. Celts began each new year on November first; This is the day that ends the harvest and marks the beginning of winter, cold and hard, which many then feared they had not stored enough food to survive. With that in mind it is no small wonder that this time of year was often associated with death. So the day before, Samhain , Celts believed that this world and the Deadworld boundaries blurred and th...

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