Female Beauty

Rooted in the ancient Celtic autumn festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the old year and beginning of the new, Halloween (October 31st) was considered a night in which space and time had no meaning, and the veil separating the world of the living and that of the dead was tenuous and spirits of people who had died during that year would try to inhabit the bodies of the living. The Celtic peoples, who lived in the British Isles and western Europe, would make their houses cold and undesirable so the spirits would not enter. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought the tradition to North America in the 1840′s.

Trick-or-treating may have originated in an old European custom called ‘souling’. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would then walk from town to town begging for square pieces of bread with currants called “soul cakes”. The beggars would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives in return for soul cakes.

The Jack-o-lantern custom originates in Irish folklore. As notorious drunkard and trickster named Jack tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping Satan up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, Jack would let him down the tree. According to the tale, after Jack died he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied entrance to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember inside a hollowed-out turnip to light his way through the frigid darkness. The Irish used turnips as their “Jack’s lanterns” originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America became a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 5:04 am and is filed under Fashion, Holiday Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.