History & Halloween

I love Halloween, it is one of my favorite holidays and have a few posts that I would like to do as we come close to this magical time of year.
The origin of Halloween dates back to the ancient Celtic fire festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). This is the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year.
2000 years ago, the Celts who lived in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France celebrated their new year on November 1st( this day marked the end of summer and the harvest). They believed that on the night before the new year that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became thin and the dead could communicate with the living.
“During this interval the normal order of the universe is suspended, the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily removed, the sidh lies open and all divine beings and the spirits of the dead move freely among men and interfere sometimes violently, ion their affairs” (Celtic Mythology, P.127)
The Celts did not have the concept of heaven and hell, the Christian church later brought that into the land, instead they believed that when people died, they went to a land of eternal youth and happiness.
According to Christian criticism from many sources, Halloween did not originate as a Satanic festival, but was religious in nature by the Celtic faith of the ancient Druids. Celts were pagan (believe in more than one god), they celebrated holidays containing fairies and elves, not Satanists (rebellion against God) who sacrifice children to the devil.
Contrary to belief, there is no evidence of costumes derived from the Druids or that they were part of the Samhain festival. There are records of costumed processions in a much later time(Christian times), but these costumed procession were not limited to Halloween but appear much more frequently at Christmas.
“Trick or Treat”, the phrase is not only American but the practice is too. In the late 1800s and early 1900s there was a custom of playing pranks on Halloween. This custom appears to have come from Ireland and Scotland where they had a practice called Mischief Night. Out houses would be over turned, fence gates would be unhinged, and so forth. This is the “Trick”. The “Treat” is described below by Jill Perderson Meyer:
“By the turn of the century, Halloween had become an ever more destructive way to “let off steam” for a crowded and poor urban dwellers. As Stuart Schneider writed in ‘Halloween in America’(1995), vandalism that had been limited to tipping outhouses; removing gates, soaping windows and switching shop signs, by the 1920s has become nasty—with real destruction of property and cruelty to animals and people. Perhaps not coincidentally, the disguised nighttime terrorism and murders by the Ku Klux Klan reached their apex during this decade. Schneider writes that neighborhood committees and local city clubs such as the Boy Scouts then mobilized to organize safe and fun alternatives to vandalism. School posters of the time call for a “Sane Halloween.” Good children were encouraged to go door to door and receive treats from home and shop owners, thereby keeping troublemakers away. By the 1930s, these “beggar’s nights” were enormously popular and being practiced nationwide, with the “trick or treat” greeting widespread from the late 1930s.”

*Information is accurate to the best of my knowledge, please feel free to correct and or add any information you may have.