Today: Halloween or All Saints?

[[MC]Ronin[MC]]

Today: Halloween or All Saints?

There is a lot to be said for today, October 31st - that it is the last day of the month, it is International Black Sea Day, and our right to health and clean environment, that the Orthodox Church celebrates St. Luke, but perhaps what is best known today is that it is celebrated Halloween or All Saints Day.

Let's talk a little more about the origins and traditions of Halloween.

The holiday is associated with the ancient Celts.

They celebrated their New Year - Samhain at the end of October, when they harvested their last harvest.

They believed that on the night of New Year's Eve, the border between the dead and the living opened, and the shadows of those who had passed away last year visited the earth in search of living bodies to settle in.

To protect themselves from the shadows, people extinguished the fire in the hearths and tried to look as scary as possible - wearing animal skins and heads, hoping to scare the ghosts (this is similar to the Kukeri tradition of January 1 in our country).

They gave the spirits food to feed and not insist on entering their home. The inhabitants themselves gathered around fires that were lit by Druid priests.

These gatherings made predictions for the winter and sacrificed animals. At the end of the gathering, everyone took the charcoal from the fire and lit it with it.

In 853 AD. however, Pope Gregory IV became very annoyed with this pagan tradition and decided to put an end to it.

To this end, he set 31 October as a day for the celebration of all Christian saints and martyrs, which in countries with a large Celtic po[CENSORED]tion naturally coincided and mingled with the traditionally existing pagan holiday.

And so the date was already marked by the Christian church as All Saints Day.

Most people around the world, however, use the present day to organize cheerful carnivals and masquerade parties, with little thought for the Celts, their customs or anything else.