Happy Samhain/Halloween, etc! Most people know this holiday as a time for dressing up, and children getting candy from “trick or treating.” But this was the most important holiday of the year, before Christianity came to Europe. The Druids, witches, Wiccans and other pre-Christian religions saw this day as a kind of New Year day. It was the most important holiday of the year, in which people celebrated the end of the harvest and the beginning of the new year. It was also a time where people believed that spirits could visit the living. That is why many people wore masks. They carved pumpkins out of fruits, such as turnips. (Pumpkins came from the new world, so Europeans didn’t have them).

It is amazing that any of these traditions remain, since Halloween can be viewed as a non-Christian holiday. At one point the Christian Church came up with All Saints Day, for a holiday after Halloween, where people were supposed to dress as their favorite saints and go to mass.

Here are some good Halloween tunes: