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A deep history of Halloween

Or, how far back can historical analysis take us?

But it intrigues me that there is a wide swathe of the world which celebrates a holiday marked by sweets, blurred boundaries between the living and the dead, votive candles or bonfires, and costumes. Halloween has origins in Samhain, a major annual festival of the ancient Celts, which took place on November 1 and was distinguished by bonfires, feasting, and the belief that the spirits of the “Otherworld” roamed the earth on this night. As an example of post-christian survivals of this cosmology, MacLeod cites the case of an Irish priest living in 8th century Germany — Virgil by name — who angered the Pope himself with his heretical preaching that “there was another world and other men beneath the earth.”

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