A traditional Halloween

Candy, costumes, and . . . sacrificial offerings to the spirits of the dead?

MELISSA HIEBERT STAFF

Halloween, in addition to becoming the secondlargest consumer holiday of the year, has a lot of tradition behind it. From ancient rituals to modern-day candy grabs, this holiday has morphed from one obscurity to the next. But maybe that’s just what makes it so darn cool.

According to the wonderful world of Internet information (courtesy of the History Channel), Halloween originated over 2,000 years ago from a Celtic holiday. The Celts celebrated their new year on Nov. 1, and they believed that the night before the new year was a time in which the boundaries of the living world and the dead became distorted. As such, they celebrated a holiday called Samhain, which was a time that ghosts of the dead would return to earth. They often built huge bonfires and dressed up in costumes consisting of animal heads and skins, all the while sacrificing animals and crops to the spirits.

Once the influence of the Christians took over around the 800s, the pope designated Nov. 1 All Saints' Day (most likely in attempt to turn the celebration into a similar, more Christian-based holiday). The day began to be called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (which is apparently a Middle English Alholowmesse word meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, was called Allhallows’ Eve, eventually turning into Halloween.

So that, little Billy, is how Halloween was invented. Of course nowadays Halloween comes with a multitude of other traditions, other than just candy and costumes. For one, trying to scare the hell out of each other by telling ghost stories. Remember the story about the killer who kills all the girl’s friends and her dog and then licks her hand, so she thinks it’s the dog, but then leaves her a message that says, “people can lick hands too?” In retrospect, it’s kind of a dumb story that doesn’t really make any sense. But none the less, I can recall one of my friends literally sleeping with a pair of scissors beside her all night long just in case.

Let’s not forget of course all of the urban legends. The most popular by far was the one about “bloody Mary,” where if you looked into a mirror and said “bloody Mary” 13 times while turning around she would appear in the mirror, or come out of the mirror and attack you or kill you or something like that. I’ve heard many other stories like this, such as if you run around a church three times on Halloween that the horseman ghost will take you away. Silly yes, but have you ever dared to try it? That’s right you wuss, I didn’t think so.

Another Halloween-ish tradition that is definitely worth mentioning is gate night. For those of you goodiegoods out there, gate night is essentially Halloween Eve, in which people go around and toilet paper houses, smash pumpkins, egg windows, and otherwise cause mayhem and random acts of mischief. Now, I am a standup university student and I can say that I have never, ever participated in such a destructive holiday. (Hey I said I could say it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true.) Apparently gate night stemmed from people going around and unscrewing people’s gates and hiding them, but that seems a little far-fetched. Why would someone go to all of the effort to pull a moderately witty prank when you can engage in some meaningless, petty act of vandalism?

So, if you think the ancients were odd for sacrificing small animals to the spirits of the dead, don’t forget to take a look at our own wacky rituals, involving vandalizing our neighbour’s homes, scaring the hell out of our friends and small children, and gorging ourselves with all of the cheap crappy-tasting candy bars that we can fit into our mouth at once.