HALLOWEEN ON CRETE?
ITS DAY IS COMING
By Lou Duro
       
  Halloween, Oct. 31, is an annual celebration in some countries, especially Ireland and America, but it has yet to become popular on Crete. However, with the influx of foreigners to these shores, the spooky holiday is starting to get some much-needed exposure, and more costume parties are being held in homes of expats and in pubs they frequent. But, just what is celebrated on Halloween, and how did this strange custom originate?

The word itself, Halloween, has its origins in the Catholic Church, coming from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve, the night before the church's observance of All Saints Day. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31, and that holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.

One story has it that the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back on that day searching for living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. To ward off the spirits, people would dress up in ghoulish costumes and noisily parade around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

The Romans later 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 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 Nov. 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," the original soul food, made from bread and 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.

The Jack-O-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. Apparently, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree. After Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.