With Halloween aproaching I thought a reprint or out History of Halloween would be apropos 
Halloween did not begin as an evil holiday and is still not an evil holiday unless you make it one. The truth be told, Halloween is whatever kind of holiday YOU make it History of Halloween The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in Ireland, celebrated their new year on November 1st. The celebration was called Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”, the sow is pronounced like the female hog). They believed that on this night the boundary between the living and the dead became crossable. To protect themselves and prepare for the winter ahead their priests, Druids, built huge sacrificial bonfires where they burnt offerings of food and animals to their deities. During these celebrations the people wore costumes made of animal heads and skins and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.
When the Romans conquered the Celts and ruled them for four hundred years this holiday became melded with the Roman holidays of Pomona (goddess of fruit & trees) and Feralia, the holiday in October when the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead. The tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween probable started when the holiday of Pomona was incorporated. When Christianity spread to the Celtic lands in the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1st as All Saints’ Day. Many believe the Pope was trying to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowsmas (from the Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve. People being true to form, finding nick names and contractions for things, shortened it to Halloween.
Later in A.D. 1000 the Christian church would make Nov. 2nd All Souls day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. Together the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints’, All Saints’ and All Souls’, were called Hallowmas. This is probably where the tradition of dressing up for Halloween began. Also during this celebration poor people would go around to the various villages begging for “soul cakes” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more sould cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead would remain in limbo after death until enough prayers were said for them to allow their souls to pass on to heaven. This is probably one of the reasons for trick or treat. The trick part was added on to the begging when industrious youth of America decided to play pranks on those who would not give treats In my opinion Halloween is just a time to let our inner child out to play and have fun. We get to spend time with our children, telling them about the fun we had on Halloween growing up and passing on the fun traditions of dressing up in costume, bobbling for apples (germs and all) and trick or treating. The holiday of Halloween is not evil, it is just some evil people have started to use it for their purposes. It is up to us to take it back and keep it just a fun holiday.
I hope you enjoyed this brief history of Halloween. If you are interested in a more in-depth history than what I have written here, here are a few of the sites I used a research for this blog. http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlresources/units/Byrnes-celebrations/halloween.html
http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween/viewpage?pageId=713
We have added a few new items to our Halloween collection. To visit our collection just click on any of the pictures. 
