Halloween

Halloween is an interesting holiday. Today, for kids, it's about dressing up and going door to door and getting a treat. The tricking part is left for the teenagers. Shaving cream, toilet pappering, egging, rolling pumpkins down the big hill in town (in the little town I lived in), or just smashing them along side the road. For adults, it's about dressing up and get getting drunk the Saturday before at some bar or a party. Good times.
This is how it is for some people. There are a lot of people who believe that Halloween is an 'evil' holiday and that it celebrates satan. I've done a bit of research on this because I LOVE halloween and it always bugs me when people say, I hate it..it's satans holiday. Well..guess what...here is the truth about halloween.
The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year. Keep reading, it will all make sense in a minute.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.
Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.
The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.
See...starting to sound like the Halloween you know now??? Keep reading....
The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.
So, as time went on, customs change. Holloween might be about death, but death isn't evil. So, what do you think?? Is it evil? Is it a Pagen holiday?
I stole the history from http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm but read a lot of other views that were the same, just longer.