Every Oct. 31, we celebrate this spooktastic holiday known as Halloween. For one night of the year, we all have a legitimate excuse to disguise ourselves in some wacky costumes, indulge in some of our favourite sweets, and to scare people’s socks off. With Halloween creeping its way around the corner, it is interesting to think about where it all began. While Halloween is a holiday that people have come to grow fond of and eagerly look forward to, the celebration only made its way to Canada in the mid 1800s. Halloween has a unique history and we thought this would be the perfect time to tell the tale. It has been suggested that the origins of Halloween can be found in the three-day Celtic celebration known as the Samhain Festival or fire festival. This festival took place every year on Nov. 1 in Britain and Ireland and it marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. The Celts believed that the evening of Oct. 31 marked the division between the light and dark halves of the year and was a time where the line between the living and the dead was fractured, meaning all supernatural beings were able to visit the living. See full story in the Wednesday, Oct. 30 edition of The Record.
This is Halloween, this is Halloween!
By Taylor McClure, Special to The Record
