The Celts lived in what now is known as Ireland some 2,300 years ago, said the Rev. Joe Krupp, the director of campus ministry for St. John Student Center, 327 M.A.C. Ave.

They were nature worshipers and farmers who celebrated the new year on Nov. 1. The date represented the end of summer and the start of a “dead” time of year, he said.

“That was the time they really contemplated death,” Krupp said. “They thought that the night before the new year, the line between Earth and heaven got really blurry and weak.”

The Celtic people held a festival called Samhain on Oct. 31, with costumes and bonfires, Krupp said.

“They put on costumes and built these huge sacred fires,” he said. “The costumes usually were animal costumes and the priest would tell peoples’ futures.”

Eileen Reilly, the associate director of the Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, said Samhain is a very old Pagan festival.

“The lighting of the bonfires, the idea that the division between worlds was very thin … all of that has a modern connotation in Halloween,” she said.

The living and the dead coming together was a part of the festival, Reilly said.

“There’s a spooky element of it … the older idea of life and death and the dead and the living intermingling,” she said.

Christian history

All Souls Day and All Saints Day represent Christian traditions revolving around Halloween, Krupp said.

Christians remember martyrs and saints on Nov. 1, All Saints Day, and the dead are remembered Nov. 2, on All Souls Day.

“Catholics and mostly fundamentalists are really returning to that,” he said. “(Saying), ‘We won’t celebrate Halloween, but we will celebrate All Saints,’ so they dress like saints on those days.”

Contrary to popular belief, Halloween has nothing to do with evil things, Krupp said.

“The roots of Halloween have nothing to do with evil and have everything to do with Paganism,” he said. “If you look at its origins, that they are a reminder of our mortality or a reminder of those we love who have gone before us.”

Different forms

Seasonal celebrations sometimes take the place of traditional Halloween festivities, said Emily Tabuteau, the associate chair of the MSU Department of History and professor of English history.

Until recently, the English did not recognize Halloween, she said. Instead, they celebrated Guy Fawkes Day on Nov. 5.

Guy Fawkes was an English citizen accused of conspiracy in 1605. Fawkes was part of the greatest treason plot in English history — an attempt to blow up the Parliament building in London, Tabuteau said.

“Guy and a number of other plotters … were going to try to blow up the Parliament house … and essentially wipe out the ruling class of England,” she said. “If they carried it off it would have been the equivalent of the 9/11 hijackers crashing a plane into the Capitol at the time of the State of the Union address.”

In celebration of Fawks’ capture, the English would burn his effigy as their version of a celebration at fall’s end, Tabuteau said.

For most of Mexican culture, Day of the Dead, similar to All Souls Day, is celebrated to happily remember loved ones who have passed away, said John Roy Castillo, the director of the Cristo Rey Community Center, 1717 N. High St., in Lansing.

“It’s basically a day when people give reverence to people who mostly have died the past year,” he said.

Day of the Dead observers decorate altars and celebrate with food and firecrackers to remember the dead, he said.

Traditions

Pumpkins and bobbing for apples are Halloween symbols that might have originated from the ancient harvest time traditions of other cultures.

“The carving of pumpkins … started out in Ireland and Scotland as the carving of turnips,” Reilly said.

This and other games were associated with this time of the year, she said.

“A lot of the games (had) to do with telling one’s future … trying to predict a loved one or who one would marry,” Reilly said. “Love and death were interconnected in the games.”

Apples were harvest foods, often used for games similar to the modern day tradition of bobbing for apples, she said.

“There were various sorts of games to do with apples … in season at that time of the year,” Reilly said.

A Roman feast to honor the goddess of fruit also featured activities similar to bobbing for apples, Krupp said.

MSU Halloween

Although the modern MSU practice of using Halloween as an excuse for a drunken costume party might not seem as sacred as past cultures’ harvest celebrations, it represents a modern interpretation of Halloween’s history.

And it already is memorable for students, some of whom came to MSU to celebrate the holiday even before they became students.

“Up here, it’s usually a big thing,” medical technology senior Michael Decarolis said. “Even before I was a student, everyone would come up and celebrate.”

Human biology and Spanish senior Lindsay Petroff remembers Halloween house parties her freshman year and said she will continue to celebrate even after she graduates.

Petroff said celebrating Halloween at college or after is her and other students’ prerogative.

“Why not?” she said. “If that’s what people want to do, if that’s what makes people happy to dress up … for four days (then) totally do it.”