then you can monster math
and do my grave
just like the mass children where every October thirty-first halloween itself
has won many different faces in its enchanting three thousand year history
the halloween we know today all started here amid the rocky green hills and
magical landscapes of Ireland centuries before Christ a tribe of warriors called
the celts lived throughout the British Isles and northern France
on the rugged shores of the IRA see the celts formed an agricultural community
and like any people who lived off the earth nature could be friend or foe
they were at the mercy of the elements and winter was the scariest time of all
for the early Celts once you have it was in that was all you got there was no way
of getting more
and as the dark days came in you would look to the winter with a certain amount
of trepidation and it became a time when perhaps your own mortality and the
mortality of your community became relevant as winter approached the celts
ask their priests known as drew its to pray for them and the most important
night of prayers occurred late in their fall the last day of the harvest and the
first day of the dark of winter
on that note the celts believed that the boundary between the world of the living
and the spirit was unusually thin so thing that the souls of the Dead roam
freely back and forth that night was enormously important to the celts they
called it
salad Gail for november salen represented the transition from the
summer to the winter and these transitional times the times between the
light in the dark
dusk and dawn were very magical x to the celts weird things could happen at these
times that don't happen at other times on sound night only the celts believed
those who had died in the past year
walk the earth once more
but not every visiting ghost was friendly so the count devised ways to
appease the spirits it comes it from this very archaic since the Dead return
you have to placate that we have to do something with them where they might
they might return stay they might I trouble you and you know want you in
various ways to appease the spirits the celts would parade out to the edge of
their villages with offerings trying to coax the evil forces away from their
homes they would leave food and sweets outside as gifts for the dead
a tradition that would eventually become trick or treating the Dead come back to
life at Halloween
and that's why is a great fear of the Dead around halloween and many of the
devices and practices and customs of halloween in Europe or attempts to keep
the dead in their graves the celts believed that the gods controlled the
Sun and the shortening days were a sign of their awesome power so they built
bonfires to honor those gods and to pray for the return of the Sun
- thank the earth for giving up her bounty at harvest time
the celts offered the gods blood sacrifices cow horses and other animals
were thrown onto huge bonfires the purpose of sacrifice that something has
to be offered back if the earth had given up her riches in every way
then the early Celts would have considered it only polite to offer back
some of their own life essence to the earth
this life essence offered clues to the Future Druids would read the burnt
entrails of the animals like tea leaves
divining who would die who would prosper in the coming year
sawa night when the curtain into the netherworld was parted was considered
the best night of all for predicting the future
they had to know it was it a good time to move who is going to be alive who was
going to die with leaders going to be healthy for another year
so they looked into the future on that night because that was the night with
the changing seasons that the spirits came alive and might have answers
the prophecies that the Druids redwood spread through villages becoming stories
told long into the night
this is thought to be one of the origins of telling ghost stories on Halloween
these ancient Celtic traditions live on
among the new pagans of Ireland that's without the Sun the earth is far and i
was like the earth the Sun has no purpose
these pagans worship nature using age old rituals to keep the Celtic solid
ways alive at the same time we stand in the gateway to the other world
we're not so different from the Celtic peoples 2,000 years ago we still look
over our shoulder before we walk into a dark room
we still look over our shoulder if we hear footsteps behind us we still fear
the unknown like drop on Halloween Chris Thompson's fellow pagans summon ancient
deities to their solid celebration tonight for invoking the spirits of the
Dead and thanking the earth spirits for life are Celtic firewheel will be lit by
a green man figure who represents the green fire in the darkness
and if time between time and this place between places in this world between
worlds
let us celebrate the dance of life in the dark
what we wanted to experience is the feeling that we are both in all time and
no time
a sense of gateway the green lane of light dancing in the dark
the Irish called the mysterious stone piles donning their countryside fairy
mounds
celtic tales tell us that on sound night it is the fairies in these mounds who
roam the earth just as trick or treaters today roam the streets dressed as
fairies and otherworldly spirits the belief in death the belief in the
wandering spirits
the idea of dressing up in costumes and being allowed to perform mischief and
pranks much as supernatural creatures would much of our contemporary Halloween
traditions seem to be reflected in this ancient Celtic holiday called sahlan
the ancient Celts who walked these hills and their beliefs about spirits of the
Dead and nature's mystical powers gave us the ingredients of the halloween we
know today
on the other side of Europe at around the same time ancient Romans were
celebrating a night of mystical revelry that also played a big role in shaping
modern halloween the night was called pomona the Romans worshipped pomona the
goddess of gardens and fruits in a festival that took place around november
first
- Thank You Mona for a bountiful harvest Romans laid out apples and nuts in
tribute
apple bobbing on Halloween today in fact comes from this
pomona tradition
in 50 BC the Romans conquered much of northern Europe spreading pomona the
land of sewing these two traditions began to merge the traditions of
honoring the dead and the harvest but just as the trends shaping early
halloween began to form a new force bitterly opposed to all things
pagan was taking root all across Europe Christianity Solomon would soon find
itself in the center of a raging moral battleground pagan vs christian
at the dawn of the first millennium the world was dominated by people whom we
now call pagans people who like the celts worship natural spirits and were
not part of any formal religion
but the pagan world would soon collide head-on with a powerful movement on the
rise across the world one that would try to conquer everything non-christian in
its path in the first entry there is this Christian conviction that all the
spirits that other people worship as the gods of the waterfall and the stars and
the air all the other forces which we would call force natural forces forces
of the universe are actually demonic beings actually a hostile evil belonging
to the world which is opposed to God early Christians attacked the pagan
world all around them
the missionaries recognize that the Celtic people had true supernatural
experience but they felt that if these people thought there was a pantheon of
gods and goddesses that must be the work of the devil who deceived them in the
early fourth century the pagan emperor of Rome
Constantine had a vision of Christ while he was on a battlefield
he converted to Christianity paving the way for its rise everywhere
in 325 Constantine some of the Council of Nicaea which laid out christian
doctrine and inspired missionaries to go out and save thousands of pagan Souls
across Europe but missionary soon found that steering the public away from
paganism would not be easy
these cultural traditions are so deep in the images are so deep that you can't
just wipe them out
so what you do is baptized them and try to turn them sort of give them a
Christian twist and interpretation and sanctify them in some way
the first concrete plan was lady in around the year 600 by Pope Gregory the
first
hope Gregory recognize that Christianity was still a young movement struggling to
gain acceptance and he knew he'd never persuade the pagans to end their ways
and take up Christianity all in one step
he said if you should come across a group of people worshipping a tree
so rather than cut the tree down and tell them that they were ignorant end
error said instead consecrated to Christ and tell them to keep meeting as they
were accustomed to meeting at the same spot but old ways persisted and the
church's success was mixed the regular folk were not really interested in
Christianity the idea that you had to wait until the next life to have a good
life was not exactly a popular idea
so the Christians had to make Christianity more attractive to the
celts and so they basically grafted on the new religion on to the practices of
the old religion by the eighth century the church had had enough of trying to
accommodate the pagans
Pope Gregory the third decided to challenge pagan beliefs head on by
turning their most important holiday solid into a day of the church
november first was claimed as All Saints Day a day to honor those Christian
saints who did not already have a saint's day of their own
Paul since days also known as all hallows day word hello being equivalent
to st. it was the eve of All Hallows that became known as all hallows evening
into a corruption of the evening
hello Eve we got the contemporary word halloween the church had taken the first
step in absorbing the ancient holiday of Solomon
but there were still many pagans who carried on the old beliefs and practices
anyway people continued to dress and strong costumes are in animal skins
continue to put out offerings for the souls of the dead who were traveling at
that particular time and continue to do much of what they had been accustomed to
doing
but now doing it under the name of halloween rather than under the name of
Solomon in the tenth century the church took its campaign one step further
it declared November second to be All Souls Day a day to remember everyone
saint or not
who died in the last year it was a direct appropriation of sound but it
would take more than that to loosen the grip of age-old traditions
the practice that concern the most was witchcraft which is where a long time
symbol to the church of the very worst of paganism especially at sound time the
word which comes from the old english Wicca or wise one
usually a woman and which is where long seen by the church has unruly feminine
powers who tapped into the darkest aspects of halloween in the 1400 church
zealots hunted them down
punishments were cruel
the presence of powerful women or sorcerers and witches would have been
particularly troubling to the Christian community and particularly troubling to
the clergy is no question they would find that more reprehensible than
anything else
and as the devil's handmaidens which is were portrayed as gruesome violent hags
bent on evil and destruction in 1486 Pope Innocent the eighth published a
book claiming a direct link between witchcraft and the devil
he then outlawed the pagan Celtic religion