The Hour

It’s time to get decked out in fancy dress and carve out pumpkin lanterns to scare awy ghosts and ghouls. It can only mean one thing - Halloween is just around the corner!

But how many of us really know the origins of Halloween, and where our obsession with the spooky celebration comes from?

Historian Ashley Cowie explained that many Halloween celebrations are steeped in Celtic traditions and superstitions.

He said: “To get back to the origins of Halloween you have to go back about four-and-a-half thousand years, right back to when the Celtic nations owned Western Europe and they split their calendars into two halves – the light half of the year and the dark half of the year.

“At the end of the summer when they were gathering their crops, preparing to dig in for the winter, they were stockpiling foods and paying offerings to their sun god, who is called Samhain.

“And we take the festival Samhain which is traditionally the name for Halloween right back their to the Celtic religions and festivals.”

Much of what we do today to celebrate the annual event today is an Americanisation of our Celtic traditions. Fancy dress is a prime example – it’s common practice to dress up in all sorts of weird and wonderful outfits nowadays, but back in past times getting dressed up in costumes served a much different purpose.

Ashley said: “The whole concept of dressing up and going up out as demons and what not was an idea that the Celts had that the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest at this time of the year, when they would worship their ancestors, and they thought that spirits could come back in force. They dressed up as evil spirits or took guise so the spirits were unaware of the humans.”

Similarly dooking for apples stemmed from another tradition that would foretell which of the women in the community would be the next to get married!

The historian added: “Dooking for apples happened just at the very end of the evening on Halloween. Celts would tie a string up in a tree and they would skin an apple, the apple swung and all the ladies in the tribe would come together - and whoever grabbed the apple with their mouth would be the next lady married.”