EXT Halloween Research

The things that I thought halloween was about:
Dressing up
The day of the dead
Celebrating the dead
Going around the neighbourhood
Getting lollies
Eating lollies
Different Costumes
Spooky
Scaring things
Graves

I don't really think much of halloween. Our family never really celebrates it but if I think back I reckon that halloween is about celebrating the dead and dressing up weird and wonderful costumes. I also think that its about gathering lollies to eat.
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We have found out more about the origins of halloween. The celtic calendar had both a dark side and a light side. Samhain or the Harvesting festival, was at the beginning of the dark times where the nights were longer than the days. Celtic tribes would light bonfire to welcome the new year. When the calendar changed from light to dark, it was said to be permeable for both worlds to collide.

All saints day was called Lemuria but the christians tried to make the day sound more christian-friendly. On Lemuria ghostly figures called larvae, would rise from the dead and haunt people. To keep this from happening, Romans would pour milk would onto each grave to keep them larvae in.

So All saints or all hallows day was moved from the 13th of May to the 1st of November to drain the life out of pagan Samhain. November the 31st was later changed as peopled started to call it All hallows evening which later formed into all hallows even and then halloween. All souls day held on the 2nd of November was to celebrate basically all souls.

People would go around to houses begging for soul cakes on all souls day. While eating the cakes they would pray for the souls stuck in the purgatory.  Purgatory is in the middle of hell and heaven and hold the souls of non-mortals. By having faith in heaven and god, it is said you could be taken up to heaven. This was how the our modern ‘Trick or Treating’ had originated.