Magical, Mystical Halloween

If you are wondering about the origins of Halloween, you can find that there are many different stories and origins of how the holiday started. Some say that it is a day of Satan, or the worship of evil spirits and the practice of witchcraft which they believe is Druid religion. There are others who believe it was a day for the ghosts of the dead to come back and settle the scores on people who had done them wrong.

A few stories have been told about the spirits that had past away the year before this night and they were coming back in search of living bodies to possess in hopes of an afterlife. I have heard myself that Halloween was a European custom called All Souls Day, where early Christians would travel to villages collecting cakes and for every cake that they collected they would say a prayer for the patrons lost loved ones. They believed this would help the wondering souls enter into heaven.

There is the magic of the Jack-O-Lantern where the flame that sits inside is supposed to scare away the evil for it is afraid of being tricked. The ghost, goblins and witches that most people would associate with evil were actually thought of as the ones to scare the

Evil spirits away. They were believed to mingle with the people on the eve of the New Year while the people also wore masks and celebrated. When I think of a magical and mystical Halloween, I think of some ghosts and goblins, but I also think of fairies and pixies in a glen dancing, singing, and glowing in the moonlight! Spreading their wings in the fresh night air, afraid of nothing! Roaming in their land playing little tricks on anyone they come across. I think of the elves playing their music with flutes and drums in the middle of a glen.

The current Halloween that we now celebrate is a mix of ancient customs combine together through the years. The majority of people in the here and now do not associate the ancient beliefs with Halloween. We still think of ghosts and goblins and witches, but generally we do not associate Satan with Halloween. We are worried about what kind of costumes our children are going to choose and if we are going to buy them or make them.

We fret about where to find exactly what they want or what we need to put the costumes together to have them look their extreme best. On the whole, large numbers of children really don’t even like to dress up in scary costumes any more. There are so many cartoons characters and fictional story book characters or characters from movies that children want to be they don’t even think about the scary part of it.

Today in the present time when you think or say Halloween the first thing that pops into most adults and children’s minds is candy, and then I would say pumpkins. Children think of fun and games at parties in a cool costume that they get to show off once a year. After pondering the ancient traditions of Halloween, I do not see much magic, mystic, or evil in this particular holiday any more. I see it as a chance for children to be something for one whole day that they dream about being all year or when they grow up. They get to bring home a big bag of candy and carve faces in pumpkins. We as adults really don’t explain the original meaning of Halloween to them because we ourselves do not celebrate it in the same manner as the ancient people did, due to our beliefs changing.

by Peter Koonz