Nation Mourns

Police said they've launched a 475-member task force to invetigate Saturday's disaster, which was concentrated in a sloped, narrow alley.

South Korean police investigated on Monday what caused a crowd surge that killed more than 150 people including 26 foreigners during Halloween festivities in Seoul in the country's worst disaster in years, as President Yoon Suk Yeol and tens of thousands of others paid respects to the dead at special mourning sites.

Saturday's disaster was concentrated in a sloped, narrow alley in Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood, a popular nightlife district, with witnesses and survivors recalling a "hell-like" chaos with people falling on each other like dominoes. They said the entire Itaewon area was jammed with slow-moving vehicles and partygoers clad in Halloween costumes, making it impossible for rescuers and ambulances to reach the crammed alleys in time.    READ MORE...

Halloween

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. SOURCE: History.com

Over the years it transformed itself into wearing costumes, carving pumpkins, festivals, and trick or treat activities.  It is mainly a children's day or evening depending upon which day of the week it falls.

What is interesting to me is that when I was growing up in Alexandria, VA, my parents encouraged us to wear costumes and trick or treat around the neighborhood by outselves as it was a relative safe decade.  However, when I moved to TN in 1990, trick or treating was frowned upon by the Southern Baptists and also discouraged because some candy may have been poisoned.

Halloween is still celebrated and many people still wear costumes to work (only at those companies that allow that sort of nonsense) and some parents drive their children around in cars to collect candy from those people they know.  We are keeping our lights turned off and will buy no candy mainly because of the COST this year.

I would suspect that gradually over the years, the Halloween traditions will soon disappear once our grandchildren begin to have children.

Thanksgiving and Christmas follow Halloween and I wonder what will happen to those traditions in time....  the world has other things to think about than just celebrations.

Halloween

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

Did you know? One quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

Halloween

Halloween Born in "Hell Caves"

The current archaeological site of Rathcroghan displays an artist’s impression of the temple that once stood there. It was the main meeting place of the Connaught kingdom 2,000 years ago.PHOTOGRAPH BY RONAN O'CONNELL

In the middle of a field in a lesser known part of Ireland is a large mound occupied by sheep. These livestock wander freely, chewing the grass beneath their feet. Yet, had they been in that same location 2,000 years ago, these animals probably would have been stiff with terror, held aloft by chanting, costumed pagans while being sacrificed to Celtic demons that inhabited nearby Oweynagat cave.

Considered by the ancient Celts to be a passage between Ireland and its devil-infested “otherworld,” Oweynagat (pronounced “Oen-na-gat” and meaning “cave of the cats”) was the birthplace of the Samhain festival, the ancient roots of Halloween, according to Irish archaeologist Daniel Curley. Far from the child-friendly event it has become, Halloween can trace its origins to a bloody and eerie ritual marked in Rathcroghan, a former Celtic center buried beneath the farmland of Ireland’s County Roscommon.

Curley is an expert on Rathcroghan, which was the hub of the ancient Irish kingdom of Connaught. At the heart of Rathcroghan, on that monumental mound, animals were sacrificed at a mighty pagan temple during Samhain. Now Ireland is pushing for UNESCO World Heritage status for Rathcroghan (“Rath-craw-hin”), a 5,500-year-old mystery slowly being decoded by scientists and historians.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

HALLOWEEN

                                                            

Halloween or Hallowe'en (a contraction of Hallows' Even or Hallows' Evening),also known as Allhalloween All Hallows' Eve,or All Saints' Eve, is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed.

It is widely believed that many Halloween traditions originated from ancient Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain; that such festivals may have had pagan roots; and that Samhain itself was Christianized as Halloween by the early Church. Some believe, however, that Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, separate from ancient festivals like Samhain.

Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related guising and souling), attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, as well as watching horror films. 

In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although elsewhere it is a more commercial and secular celebration. 

Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.   SOURCE:  Wikipedia