Written By: Grace Bonzoumet, Staff Writer
OLD NEWS: Excerpt from the
Halloween has many distinct types of traditions now, but Halloween was very different 2000 years ago.
Today’s Halloween consists of dressing up as different characters, trick or treating, Halloween pranks, eating lots of candy, and scaring others. Halloween still raises superstitions all over the world. Stories of witches, monsters, skeletons haunt those on October 31. These are the stories we know today but where did they come from and where did they begin?
Over 2000 years ago our pagan ancestors had a festival on October 31-first called the Druidic Autumn Festival. This festival was made to celebrate the Roman goddess of fruit, Pomona. Many different Roman ceremonies were performed on this day. One tradition that the Druids performed was lighting a huge sacred bonfire. In this bonfire, the druids would cook food and perform sacrifices for Pomona. These holidays started to fade away when Christainity started to circle around Europe. Starting November 1, a holiday was made to celebrate saints across the world and the eve of this day was named Halloween. How this led to dressing up and getting candy, who knows?
