Japan apparently, is a very secular country because everybody celebrates every festival. In the same spirit, Halloween takes over the festive atmosphere every 31st October. But amidst the toothy smiles of the dim-lit pumpkin figures and the mustard yellow decorations that throng the markets almost everywhere, I am forced to wonder, ‘Why do we really celebrate Halloween?’. Surprisingly, not many know the answer (yep, I checked and double checked). The closest came to it being a Christian festival.

So, like everyone else I too looked up the internet. And hear hear. Halloween is not a Christian festival but a Celtic one. The Celts (remember a team in The Age Of Empires we all loved playing with) inhabited the earth some 2,000 years ago in the present day Ireland. For them, Halloween marked the harvesting season and the start of cold weather. Celts believed that on this day the boundary between the living and the dead blurred. That is why it was easy for the departed to come back and affect our lives. That had the priests and the locals praying and sacrificing animals to the spirits. Fancy costumes were also worn.

Many years later when the influence of Christianity spread to the Celtic lands, Pope Boniface IV declared November 1 as ‘All Saints Day’ to honour saints and martyrs with the hope to replace the Celtic festival of Halloween.

In short, events marking the history of Halloween follow like this:
Superstition (Celts) — Fear of Religious Domination (Christianity) — Intense Commercialisation (Present Times. Just try buying that pumpkin face, it is sure to make a hole in your pocket). Happy Halloween!