The season of the witch

Posted 8/21/12

UPPER DELAWARE VALLEY — According to many experts Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, is a feast which became a Christian festival, but may have started as a Celtic festival. It is said to have been …

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The season of the witch

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UPPER DELAWARE VALLEY — According to many experts Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, is a feast which became a Christian festival, but may have started as a Celtic festival. It is said to have been specifically influenced by the Gaelic Samhain, a festival to mark beginning of the darker half of the year, and the end of the harvest.

Other experts believe that it was not influenced by these pagan rituals and was strictly a Christian festival.

From Wikipedia: “In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows’ Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although in other locations, these solemn customs are less pronounced in favor of a more commercialized and secularized celebration. Because many Western Christian denominations encourage, although no longer require, abstinence from meat on All Hallows’ Eve, the tradition of eating certain vegetarian foods for this vigil day developed, including the consumption of apples, colcannon, cider, potato pancakes and soul cakes.”

Halloween is mostly a Western phenomenon, but with the spread of American culture, it is cropping up in places like Hong Kong, Japan and Russia, where it is popular mainly with younger people. Authorities in Russia discourage the celebration of Halloween.

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