Happy Halloween Everyone!

Good morning everyone,

I hope you’re all having a great start to the week 🙂

Tomorrow is Halloween, the spookiest day of the year! We’re going to be taking a look at the origins of Halloween and how it became the enormous celebration that it is in today’s blog.

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Halloween, celebrated each year on the 31st of October, is a national holiday, whose origins are rooted 2,000 years ago in the Celtic festival of Samhain. Samhain is when Celtic people throughout Europe celebrated the end of the summer, as well as the end of the harvest season.

The celebration also marked the start of winter, which they would commonly associate with death. On Samhain, the Celts believed that the veil between the living and the dead was especially thin, allowing spirits and ghosts of the departed to visit the land of the living. During the holiday, people would light bonfires and wear costumes, to keep the ghosts and spirits away.

Halloween has a lot of similarities to “Día de los Muertos” or “Day of the Dead”, which is celebrated in Mexico. Día de los Muertos follows the belief that instead of mourning the departed, it is more important to keep the memory of those passed alive. One of my favourite Disney films, Coco, is focused on the events of Día de los Muertos. If you haven’t seen the film, I would highly recommend giving it a watch, it never fails to make me feel emotional, that’s for sure.

Those who celebrate the holiday believe that on the 31st of October, the souls of deceased relatives come down from Heaven and reunite with their families. While both events may sound very similar, Halloween is typically darker, whereas Día de los Muertos is dedicated to the memory of those who have died.

Halloween started to gain immense popularity in the second half of the 19th century, when America faced an influx of immigrants. These new immigrants, including the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularise the celebration internationally, planting the seed for Halloween become the enormous holiday that it is today.

Halloween has always been a really fun day for me, a time where I can relax, unwind and have a laugh with family and friends. No matter how you choose to celebrate Halloween, I hope you have a fantastic week ahead 🙂

That’s all for today’s blog, what do you think? Do you actively celebrate Halloween? What’s been your favourite thing to dress up as?

Be sure to let me know your thoughts and answers to the above questions.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely day!