Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast. I'm your host, Heather Tesco.

Fall has come, and I'm spending my Sundays watching football,

and stores have all the Halloween decorations out, which has me thinking a lot about the history

of our current trick-or-treating traditions and how they celebrated this festival during the Renaissance.

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Sowan.

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom,

and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1st.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest, and the beginning of the

dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Keltz believed

that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead

became blurred. On the night of October 31st, they celebrated

Saoan, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to the earth. In addition

to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly

spirits made it easier for the Druids or Celtic priests to make predictions about the future.

For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were very

important during the long, dark winter, to give them comfort and direction.

On October 31st, after the crops were all harvested and put into storage for the winter ahead,

the cooking fires in the homes would be extinguished.

The druids, the priests, would meet on the hilltop in the dark oak forest,

oak trees for their size and strength and mistletoe for the remaining green in the

winter and having berries in the cold were considered sacred. The druids would light new fires

and offer sacrifices of crops and animals to thank the gods for the harvest and appease the gods

...