Hallo-What?

So, as you can see from my last post, when i got into University of Florida my life got a little busy. But I figured it's time for another blog post this one being about Halloween and why its around... I mean what does trick or treat even mean? About 2000 years ago these kids called the Celts (not to be confused with the NBA Team Celtics who are in Boston) lived in what is today Ireland, UK, and North France celebrated their new year on November 1. I guess the 1st of January was overrated for these cool-cats. To them November 1st signified the end of the summer and harvest, a time that was associated with dark winters and death. What a perfect time to celebrate! For whatever reason they believed that on the night of the 31st of October the worlds of the living and the dead's boundary became obsolete. Perfect so lets celebrate on that night too and call it Samhain. So these dead spirits that came back would come back and destroy the harvest. What? I thought we are celebrating the end of the harvest tomorrow? And they came back to destroy the leftover harvest? Some dead spirits... psh! So in the midst of casper and his friends running around destroying the already shucked corn, these other kids called the Druids combined with the Celts saw this as a time where priest would make prophecies. So they decide to commemorate this too well at least the one's who got the good news prophecies, i guess, and so they would build bonfires and run around with animal skins and read each other fortune. Very similar what we do today on halloween.

Then Roman Emperor Claudius saw that he was missing out on the fun so he decided to invade Britain and over the next hundreds of years the Roman traditions combined with Celts. The Roman tradition during the time of Samhain was to celebrate their goddess of fruit and trees, hints is why we today "bob" for apples... and spread diseases. Then the Celts around the 9th century all became Christians! Just when things started looking up for them, they saw that they needed to kinda replace the freaky holiday called Samhain, with a brighter celebration called "All Souls Day". Just so we dont piss anyone off! All-Souls Day was celebrated on November 2 and was similarly celebrated with costumes and bonfires, but no marshmallows. All-Souls Day was also called All-Hallows which came from some word that stemmed from something that happened long ago blah blah blah. The night before was called All-Hallows Eve which eventually became Halloween! Now we are getting some where.

So what is treat or treat? Going door to door asking for candy, well thats today's description. Long ago it gets a little depressing. So Halloween came to America some how we got wind of the crazy day and whatever... read about it if you want the details. All you need to know is that it came to America. But why Trick or Treat... here is the real side of the story. On All-Souls Day poor citizens would go door to door and beg for food and in return would get these pastries called Soul cakes. The poor would then pray for the families dead relatives. Try that the next time you go trick or treating, kinda makes sense right? So why the costumes? Well remember eariler when Casper was running around destroying crops well he did that Halloween night so people would dress in costumes so that Casper and his unkindly clan would mistake them for is own kind! Cheerful huh? Then people started getting really spooked and instead of opening doors for people dressed as ghost fearful of opening the door for ghost, people would place loads of food in front of their door so the ghost would not enter. I would love to around at that time. Anyways thats why we have Halloween now go forth and beg! Happy Halloween!

Video Of the Day: I would have to do the same.