From the Irish Geneology Kit irish-genealogy-toolkit/origin-of-Halloween.html Halloween in Ireland To find the origin of Halloween, you have to look to the festival of Samhain in Irelands Celtic past. Samhain had three distinct elements. Firstly, it was an important fire festival, celebrated over the evening of 31 October and throughout the following day. The flames of old fires had to be extinguished and ceremonially re-lit by druids. It was also a festival not unlike the modern New Years Day in that it carried the notion of casting out the old and moving into the new. To our pagan ancestors it marked the end of the pastoral cycle – a time when all the crops would have been gathered and placed in storage for the long winter ahead and when livestock would be brought in from the fields and selected for slaughter or breeding. But it was also, as the last day of the year, the time when the souls of the departed would return to their former homes and when potentially malevolent spirits were released from the Otherworld and were visible to mankind. - See more at: irish-genealogy-toolkit/origin-of-Halloween.html#sthash.GYpCrf03.dpuf Happy Samhain folks!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 14:34:45 +0000
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