User blog comment:Triskelle3/Too Old To Trick or Treat?/@comment-113335-20091022020206

Kwiksilver, that is actually incorrect.

Halloween was originated as a non-Christian occurance known as All Hallows' Eve, the day before the All Saints' Day.

In old-world Euroepan myths, Halloween was a night of power for spirits, both good and evil, and it was copnsidered they were at the peak of their power on this day and a few others. On October 31st, the afterlife universe and the mortal universe were bridged through time and space, allowing said spirits, good and evil, to pass through the multiverse and into the mortal realm.

The good ones did nothing to my knowledge, the evil ones gave rise to the now secular customs as listed below.


 * Though the customs have greatly changed, I've read up on the following origins of modern merriment.
 * The practice of dressing in costume was a method of preventing possession by said spirits. Evil spirits did not possess anything other than generic humans. Theoretically, dressing as, say, a washing machine, in these myths, would devert the spirits, becuase they were seeking humans to possess, not items or monsters. Of course, there were not any washing machines in the tenth century, but you get the point. Costumes were a means to "trick" the spirits from possessing the living, which is the trick in "Trick-or-Treat".
 * Jack-o-Lanterns are debatable. Some say pumpkins act similarly to garlic and that it banishes vampires (the light is a bonus), others state that the presence of glowing vegetables deter all spirits, or trick the spirits into thinking the household has already been possessed. Ancient cultures thought that vegetables could be possessed as easily as humans.
 * The spirit would see the pumpkin glowing and think "aww, that house is taken". If the the spirit wasn't convince, the light was a bonus.
 * See the Vampire Pumpkins for the reasoning.
 * The association of ghosts, witches, vampires, and the occult arose from the beginning of my paragraph, that the multiverse was breached on Halloween and that spirits could wander amongst the living.


 * Links to the slightly happier origin explanations:
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