Roger Rabbit Halloween


Posted by Admin

Roger Rabbit Halloween

Roger Rabbit Halloween

Halloween wasn’t always about candy, costume parties and decorating front yards with Jack-o’-lantern carvings. Centuries ago, when, for most Europeans, winter represented a dark, daunting time, the rituals that were later incorporated into Halloween helped people cope with the uncertainty of long winter nights and the intrusion of the world of the dead into the world of the living.

Celtic Origins of Halloween

The story of Halloween begins almost two thousand years ago, in north-western Europe. The oldest ritual that is believed to have been synthesized into what is now Halloween can be traced back to the ancient Celts, a group of tribal societies that inhabited Europe since the Early Iron Age (cca. 1200 BC – 400 AD). By the first millennium AD, the Celts, whose territory was now limited to the British Isles and northern France, had developed a distinct culture, rich in rituals, beliefs and superstitions.

The Celts celebrated their New Year on November 1st, the day that marked the end of summer and prepared people for the winter ahead. On the night before the New Year, the Celtic tribes engaged in the celebration of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), an annual harvest festival. In his book Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Nicholas Rogers describes Samhain as “an old pastoral and agricultural festival”, a pagan holiday that marked the passage to winter, a season often associated with death. The Celts believed that, on Samhain night, the ghosts of the dead roamed the earth, damaging crops and haunting the houses of the living. Samhain was loaded with superstitions. On this night, young women were advised to look in the mirror in a darkened room, so they may catch a glimpse of their future husband – a practice that was called divination.