How Did Halloween Become the Holiday it is Today?
Halloween, celebrated on October 31st, originally marked the beginning of the dark half of the year. Once tied to seasonal shifts and pastoral cycles in northwestern Europe, Halloween has always been seen as a portal for the spirit world. The Halloween decorations often used to depict this holiday include death skeletons, corpses, ghosts and Halloween’s association with death and the spirit world can be traced from its origins in ancient Celtic mythology through medieval church history to its rendering in modern popular culture. November 1 was once called Samhain, or summer’s end, and marked the beginning of winter in the British Isles and Scandinavia. Samhain was first noted in Irish mythological sagas inscribed by medieval monks one thousand years ago. It was a time when the fairy mounds opened to reveal the otherworld, and it was on Samhain that a magical fog lifted to reveal the dead. A series of papal edicts instituted a church feast day to honor all saints that was eventually set
