Halloween has been celebrated in Germany for around 20 years. Especially important: scare yourself and scare others (symbolic photo) Photo: ppl pzi fux rho
From BZ
Halloween is again on Monday evening. First and foremost, this seems to be a commercial festival that’s all about the creeps. It actually has Celtic roots.
The origins of the custom, celebrated annually on October 31st, date back 2,500 years to the Iron Age. At that time, the Celts lived in large parts of Central Europe. They based their calendars on the agricultural cycle of vegetation and celebrated the turn of the year on the evening of the eleventh full moon of the year with the festival of “Samhain”, the Gaelic word for November.
According to the belief of the Celts, the “border between the worlds” was open on this evening and the dead could come back to earth to visit their relatives. With lights they lit the way for the spirits of the deceased.
Irish dressed up in masks
The Irish modified the Celtic custom, afraid of the dead, and dressed up in grisly masks to scare off the spirits. In the Middle Ages, the pagan tradition was Christianized: in 837, Pope Gregory IV set November 1st as All Saints’ Day. Now Christians could also celebrate the pagan festival of Samhain without committing a sin.
All Hallows Evening later became Halloween Night. Irish emigrants brought the festival to the United States and Canada in the 19th century. It became an important economic factor.
Halloween has been increasingly celebrated in Germany for a good 20 years – with everything that goes with it.