Friday, November 10, 2006

Halloween Roots

Why is Halloween sinister? Why the ghosts and goblins, skeletons and scary witches?

Halloween comes from the Celtic Samhain, the 'threshold day' when the door was open to the spirit world. Souls both friendly and evil could cross over on this night. Scary costumes and frightening jack-o-lanterns could keep the spirits at bay.

But the origin lies even deeper than this 2,500 year old tradition.

Thousands of years before the Celts, in the early Neolithic, our hunting-gathering forebears gradually settled down when the Ice Age ended and big game went extinct. They took up farming.

Farming was an off-and-on proposition. Some years were good, some bad. In good years there was a food surplus, enough for winter, new births, and spring planting. Bad years meant famine, disease and starvation.

And around the time of the year we now call late October, the harvest would be in, and the people would know for sure: if it was a good year or a bad one. Winter feasts or winter famines.