Belial,

Historically, Halloween is multi-cultural. The word itself, "Halloween," has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. Pope Gregory III fixed the annual celebration on November 1 back in the 700s.

In pre-Roman Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain, the Celtic New year. The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. In the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which may hint at the origin of our American tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

The tradition of disguising oneself in a demonic form also may also be traced to a Celtic origin. One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died during the year could come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

The custom of trick-or-treating can be traced to a medieval European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, poor Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes", made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. 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.

It is only with the advent of America’s perverse fascination with political correctness that such multi-cultural festivals are mistakenly suppressed as discriminating in favor of a particular religion. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

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Eudaimonia