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One story says…
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all
those who had died throughout the preceding year would 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.
Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their
fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the
Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the
Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at
Usinach.
Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake
who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson
to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories
as myth. <Ðèñóíîê>
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But 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 might explain the origin
of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.
The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more
ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of
dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more
ceremonial role.
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