Halloween is a festival which began like 2,000 years ago its origin dates to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).
The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
They believed that the night before the new year, the boundary separating both the living and dead opens and on the night of October 31 Samhain is celebrated and it is believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth and marked the festival with the living.
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.
As time went on in the 8th century, Christians came along and changed the name from Samhain to All Saints Day or All Hallows.
In Africa, Halloween is barely celebrated because most people believe it is some kind of black magic or witchcraft since it involves the dead coming back to the land of the living to celebrate.
in the video below, some Africans are able to explain what how they view and understand the word ‘Halloween’.
