Halloween is our unique holiday. All of our other holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Independence Day, Labor Day, New Year's Day & Thanksgiving celebrate positive things. With Halloween, however, we have a celebration of the sick and perverse. That is the day that the forces of evil are manifested in the form of children going around pretending to be devils, Frankenstein monsters, ghosts, goblins, mummies, vampires, warlocks, witches and other types of ghouls. When these children beg for treats, there is an implied thread with the use of the word "trick" of consequences if you don't comply with their wishes.
Halloween's standing among our holidays gets weirder when you consider that the day after Halloween, November 1, is All Saints' Day. Back in the olden days, it was known as "All Hallows Day" and Halloween is derived from that term. In the Catholic calendar, every saint has his/her own special day Some times these are the days of their martyrdom. If they did not become martyrs, then the day is about some other even in the life of the particular saint that is of special significance. Both Hallow and Saint come from the idea of holiness. Hallow derives from the German language and Saint derives from Latin.
During the course of ancient civilizations, the day started during sunset. By ancient standards, Christmas is supposed to start at sunset of December 24th. That is why Christmas Eve became a holiday. The same is true of New Year's Eve.
In the tradition of ancient civilization, All Saints day aka All Hallows Day would start at sunset, October 31st. That evening would be known as All Hallows Eve. This became abbreviated to "Hallows Eve" and eventually to Halloween.
All of this raises the question of just how did this come about? How did a day that was meant to celebrate the saints and all that is holy also involve supernatural evil? This leads to the question of where does the concept of evil originate and what is its purpose?
The answer to this question lies in the aforementioned ancient civilizations. Originally, in the ancient world in such civilizations, whether it be the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Hittites or the Romans, the various and sundry gods and goddesses were capable of both good and evil. They could be beneficial to mankind or they could be responsible for floods, plagues and other sorts of natural calamities.
It was not until circa 580 B.C. when the Persian holy man Zoroaster who wrote down the foundation of the Zoroastrian religion that the concept of good and evil deities came into being. Although numbering no more than a few hundred thousand adherents today, Zorosastrians were once numerous as shown by the fact that prior to the Islamic conquest in the 7th Century A.D., Zoroastrianism was the official state religion of the Sassanid Empire.
Following the establishment of the Zoroastrian religion, the Jewish religion began to change. Originally Jehovah aka God was capable of both great good and great evil. Then His nature changed and he became a god of the good. What happened was that a new evil spiritual being named Satan came along and became the spiritual embodiment of all supernatural evil.
Among the Celtic peoples, especially in Britain, November 1 was considered to be the first day of the year. This was after the harvest was in and the food supply for the winter season was secured.
People had a reason to celebrate.
Christian missionaries believed that the Celts were thanking evil spirits for their harvests. However, in an effort to win over Celtic converts, November 1 became All Saints Day, a celebration of the saints and not evil spirits.
However, memories of worshiping the allegedly evil spirits persisted. and are today manifested in the tradition of trick or treat along with children disguised as such evil spirits as ghosts, goblins. vampires, witches & warlocks.
Truly, Halloween is our most unique holiday.
THE END
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