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The ancient Assyrians had ceremonies for the souls of the dead in October and November.
In Egypt, Osiris’ box or coffin, which floated on water for a year, was a distorted Egyptian memory of the Flood. This box was placed on water sometime between October and November each year.
The ancient Peruvian Incas began their year in November with a celebration called Ayamarka, which concluded with the placing of food and beverages on the graves of the departed.
Shadows of the fixation on death that is the core of Halloween can also be seen in the early Anglo-Saxon period known as the “November Blood Month.”
In India, the Hindu Durga celebration for those who have died was first tied to their New Year (which began in November).
Aboriginal Australians, each fall, put white colored stripes on both their legs and arms to symbolize a skeleton.
In many parts of Britain and Ireland Halloween used to be known as ‘Mischief Night’, which meant that people were free to go around the village playing pranks and getting up to any kind of mischief without fear of being punished. Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge, ii, 370, states that in parts of Count Waterford: ‘Hallow E’en … Read more
Samhain was a harvest festival, marking the final harvest of the year and the beginning of the onset of winter. It was traditionally seen as an occasion for revelry as well as for making offerings to protect the cattle and crops over the coming winter. Fire would also play an important role in any Samhain … Read more
The Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. pushed the native Celts north and westward in Britain, to present-day Wales, and Northern England, taking the festival with them. Scotland, having a shared Gaelic culture and language with ancient Ireland, celebrated the festival of Samhain. Meanwhile in England, the English Reformation in the 16th … Read more
Halloween is most popular in Ireland, where it originated, also known in Irish Gaelic as “Oíche Shamhna” or “Samhain Night”. The Celts celebrated Halloween as Samhain, “End of Summer,” a pastoral and agricultural festival of fire, when the dead revisited the mortal world, and large communal bonfires would be lit to ward off evil spirits. … Read more