where did halloween come from
turns out it's been with us a long time
it started as an ancient pre-christian
Celtic festival of a dead sea for the
Celts back then November first was their
New Year's that was the day that they
switched from fall to winter it's also
at the time of the year that they
believed the veil between the world of
the living and the world of the Dead was
at its thinnest that meant that the dead
could hang out with the living that's
not comfortable for anybody
they had a festival called saw one it
was the most significant holiday of
their entire year they believed it was
on saw one the souls of all the people
that had died that year finally traveled
to the Otherworld to help him get there
the living people lit bonfires to honor
the dead to help them along their
journey and also to keep them away from
the living in the early centuries of the
first millennium Christian missionaries
showed up they wanted to change the
religious practices of the Celts but
rather than just obliterate the existing
pagan holidays such as saman they tried
to transform it so what the missionaries
did was basically say hey all those
supernatural deities that you worship
their evil their demonic their spirits
their scary then they slapped the new
Christian holiday on November 1st All
Saints Day so now everyone was supposed
to worship the Saints on November 1st
instead of the dead during the festival
of sawa it didn't work
All Saints Day became known as All
Hallows but it was the night before All
Hallows the eve of All Hallows that
people continued to celebrate in the
spirit of soin as a time of the
wandering dead eventually All Hallows
Eve became hallow evening which
eventually became Halloween basically an
ancient Celtic pre-christian New Year
celebration that over the last couple
thousand years lost its pagan context
and transformed into one of the largest
secular holidays of modern times
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