halloween costumes girls: A Simple Definition
ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN
Halloween's roots date back into the early Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 decades ago at the area which is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
This day marked the conclusion of summer and the harvest and also the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was regularly associated with individual departure. Celts believed that on the night until the new year, the border between the worlds of those living and the dead became blurred. On the nights October 3-1 they celebrated Samhain, when it had been thought that the ghosts of the dead returned to ground.
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the existence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the near future. For many folks entirely related to the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the deities. During the party, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to share with each other's fortunes.
When the party was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them throughout the upcoming winter.
Did You Know?
1 quarter of all the candy sold yearly from the U.S. is purchased for Halloween.
From 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the vast majority of Celtic territory. In the span of the 400 years they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the death of the dead person. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and also the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of"bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
ALL SAINTS DAY
On May 1-3, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honour of Most Christian martyrs, and also the Catholic feast of Most Martyrs Day was set at the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to incorporate most of of saints along with all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1 ).
By the 9th century that the sway of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, even by which it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. Back in 1, 000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the deadperson. It truly is widely considered today that the church had been attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related church-sanctioned vacation season.
All Souls Day has been celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The Saints Day party was also referred to as Allhallows or All-hallowmas (in Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the evening ahead of , the conventional night of Samhain from the Celtic faith, begun to be called Allhallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA
Celebration of Halloween was extremely restricted in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems . Halloween was far more prevalent in Maryland and the southern colonies.
As the beliefs and customs of different European cultural groups as well as the Western Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to arise. The first celebrations included"play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the deceased, tell each other's fortunes, sing and dancing.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and also mischief-making of all kinds. By the center of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the nation.
From the next half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, served to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.
Trickortreat
Borrowing from English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for money or food, a practice that eventually became today's"trickortreat" tradition. Ladies believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of the upcoming husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
From the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks along with witchcraft. In the turn of this century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most frequently encountered approach to rejoice the day. Events focused on games, foods of the season and merry costumes.
Parents have been encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything"frightening" or"grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. As a consequence of those efforts, Halloween lost almost all of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentiethcentury.
HALLOWEEN Celebrations
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered festival, with parades and town-wide Halloween celebrations because the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many colleges and communities, costumes for adults vandalism began to plague a few celebrations in many communities during the moment.
From the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. As a result of elevated quantities of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or house, in which they are easily adapted.
Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old custom of trick-or-treating was revived. Trick or treating has been a relatively inexpensive way for a whole community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being performed them by supplying the neighborhood children with small treats.
Thusa brand new American tradition had been created, also it's continued to grow. Today, Americans spend around $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second biggest business holiday following Christmas.
SOUL CAKES
The Halloween tradition of"trickortreating" most likely goes into the early All Souls' Day parades in England. Throughout the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called"soul cakes" in exchange for their promise to pray to the family's dead relatives.
The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church for a way to restore the ancient custom of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The clinic, which has been known to as"moving a-souling" was eventually taken up by children who'd stop by the properties within their area and be given ale, food and money.
The custom of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and scary time. Food supplies often ran low and, even for the many people fearful of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant stress.
But on Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back into the planet, people imagined that they would encounter ghosts if they left their own homes. To prevent being recognized with these ghosts, people would wear masks whenever they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.
On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, folks would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and keep them from attempting to enter.
Halloween has at all times been any occasion filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a end-of-summer festival throughout that folks felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these spirits that were friendly they set places at the dinner table, left treats on door-steps and across the face of the road and lit candles that will help loved ones locate their way back into the spirit universe.
Now's Halloween ghosts are often depicted as far more gruesome and malevolent, and our habits and superstitions are scarier as well. We stay away from crossing trails with black cats, afraid they might bring us bad luck. This notion has its origins in the old, when many individuals thought that witches prevented detection by turning themselves to black cats.
We make an effort not to walk for equal rationale. This superstition could come from the ancient Egyptians, that believed the triangles ended up sacred (it may also have some thing todo with the fact walking beneath a leaning ladder tends to be quite dangerous ). And approximately Halloween, notably, we try in order to avoid dividing mirrors, stepping on cracks from the road or spilling salt.
HALLOWEEN MATCHMAKING
But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs today's trickortreaters have overlooked all about? A number of these outdated rituals focused to the future rather than their prior and the alive rather than the useless .
Specifically, several had to complete with assisting women determine their future husbands and reassuring them they might --with luck, by subsequent Halloween--be wed. In 18th-century Ireland, a match making cook could spoil a ring inside her mashed-potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to attract true love to the diner who found it.
In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible younger woman title a hazelnut for each of her suitors then toss the nuts in to the fire. The nut which burnt to ashes as an alternative to exploding or popping, the story wentrepresented the woman's husband. (In some versions of the legend, the opposite was correct: The nut that burned off symbolized a romance that wouldn't last.)
One other narrative had it that if a young lady ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed Halloween night she would dream of her future husband.
Young women tossed apple-peels over their shouldershoping the peels could fall over the floor while in the shape of the future husbands' initials; strove to learn about their stocks by glancing at egg yolks floating in a plate of plain water ; and burst facing of mirrors in darkened chambers, holding candles and looking over their shoulders to get their husbands' faces.
Other civilizations are somewhat competitive. At some Halloween parties, even the very first guest to discover a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first powerful apple-bobber would be the down the aisle.
Obviously, no matter if we are asking for amorous advice or seeking in order to avoid seven years of terrible luck, every one of the Halloween superstitions is determined by the character of this same"spirits" whose presence that the early Celts felt so keenly.
