Halloween and the Celts

The Celts used to believe that all the laws of time and space interact on Halloween and that the gates which isolate the dead from the living open once again, allowing the bad spirits to come back and possess the living. Population avoided lighting any fires in their homes in order not to be possessed and to be able to protect themselves against the bad spirits. Also, those who liked parades and carnivals used to dress up in weird costumes and gallivant around, trying to scare the spirits away.

The Halloween costumes were in general seen at parades and at parties. Population used to dress up as vampires, witches, mummies, demons or ghosts and the most frequently encountered colours were orange and black, these colours being linked with death and pumpkins.

Gutter History

The pumpkins chopped in the scariest ways are even now known as Jack-o'lanterns, these pumpkins coming from the Irish folk stories in the eighteenth century. The Irish say that this Jack guy was an Irishman who tricked Satan into climbing an apple tree, after which he chopped a cross and left him there. According to the tradition, Jack didn't get to Heaven, but neither to Hell, so he started wandering the Earth until Satan gave him some coals to lighten his way, coals which he put in a pumpkin. And this is how we got the Halloween pumpkin we know today.

Another legend says that you can see your half's image in the mirror if you chop an apple in front of it and if the mirror is lightened by a candle. The history of Halloween is inspired of separate traditions which have been preserved over time, but it seems that it now gets more and more non-existent connotations, too.

Halloween and the Celts