Hallowe'en, as we celebrate it, was not a Celtic celebration. At the end of the growing season, the festival of Samhuinn - the Feast of the Dead - took place. It not only marked the death of the old season on 31 October, but the arrival of the new year on 1 November. As with other Celtic festivals, it was accompanied by the ritual burning of bonfires and other festivities. The beginning of the new year was also a time to ritually celebrate fertility. It has been recorded that, during the festival, Druids sacrificed animals, such as a male and femal bullock, in fertility rites and burned humans in large wicker cages shaped like animals. It is not known for certain if these human sacrifices occurred, as the veracity of the records is questioned by some historians. The earliest records were made by Romans, during their conquest and occupation of Britain and Gaul. The Romans had a vested interest in discrediting the locals and their practices. Documentation of the forced marches and pitched battles of Roman military campaigns was fairly reliable, but had their moments when venturing outside the military sphere. (Even old Julius succumbed to this, leaving a record of elk hunting in Germania that must have originated from a drunken wag trying to pull the wool over Roman eyes.) As Christianity became established in Italy and spread across Europe, its followers attempted to prevent the celebration of the existing, pagan, festivals. They were not able to suppress them all, so they incorporated Christian celebrations into the older festivities. The ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, for example, was transformed into Christmas. Similarly, Samhuinn was adopted by early Christians. 1 November was designated as All Saint's Day in the 8th century. It was a day of worship for all of the Christian saints who did not have their own days of worship. The Christian tradition holds that the souls of the dead are released from purgatory for two days on All Saint's Eve (also known as All Hallow's Eve - hallowed saints). In the 11th century, the Christian church designated 2 November as All Soul's Day. It remains a religious holiday in the Roman church to this day. The Christian festivals of All Saint's Eve, All Saint's Day, and All Soul's Day are traditionally celebrated in a similar manner to Samheinn, but without fertility rites and any of the reported blood sacrifices. ---------------------------------------- Re: "Saturnalia came after Christmas"... It actually fell before Christmas. Originally one day in length, Saturnalia was extended to a week during Imperial times. Various emperors tinkered with the length of the festival, but it was eventually set to a one week period, starting about two weeks before the Kalends or from 17 to 23 December. The Kalends, which followed almost immediately thereafter was a celebration of the new year. With a slight adjustment of the calendar you have an instant traditional Christmas celebration.

No, And it wasn't called Halloween. Now, Easter theres a Druid/Celtic holiday as is May Day. Even Christmas borrows a few things from the Druids. (Holly and Mistletoe.)

This was more then likely a misunderstanding of our practices. If you came upon somebody standing over a body laid out on a rock in the middle of the night would you stick around to find out that's when we did embalming? Or that the guy tied to the tree murdered and raped three women and he's being exacuted? Or that the bodies in the Wicker Man are those that died from the plague and we're burning them all at once instead of wasting wood by making several small pyres? No, you'd go home with these horrible tales of butchery and evil. Especially if you're trying to conquer the very people you saw do this. If you read the myths and histories that do survive you'll see that the one thing missing is tales of human sacrifice. And when they have tried to find evidence of human sacrifice at places like Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor(Avalon), or Tara there's no trace. And the two caldrens that supposedly showed ritual sacrifice turned out to be a bowl for cleaning of babies born by c-section and for solders to drink from during battle.

See my answer.

We know very little about ancient Druidic practice. Most of the information we have comes from Roman sources, which were very biased and even misled. IT is unlikely that the Druids would have willingly shared the innermost secrets of their practices with just any one, and the Romans managed to kill most of them at slaughters such as Mona (AD 62). Those that escaped might have told the Romans all sorts of things rather than the truth, because they were bound by vows. So, did the Druids sacrifice humans? Possibly, but we cannot be sure why or how common it was. Sites such as http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/faqs/sacrific.html write "A late Iron age shaft in Holzhausen in Baviaria with a post at the bottom was presumably used for impaling a human victim; the pole when analysed had traces of human flesh and blood. In East Yorkshire, at Garton Slack a young man and a woman of about thirty were found huddled together in a shaft, a wooden stake between them pinning their arms together; the woman was apparently pregnant, since a fetal skeleton was found beneath her pelvis. Presumably the two adults were ritually killed for punitive purposes. There have also been several instances of foundation burials, often of children, which may or may not have been sacrifices (Green 1992, 183-84). Both bog and shaft burials seem particularly appropriate for cthonic otherworld-dwelling deities." While this is possible, we do not know WHO sacrificed these individuals. Similarly references to the "wickerman" in the Welsh 'Mabinogi" literature could refer to sacrifice, but the texts we have postdate the Druidic era by hundreds of years. BUT, the truth is, we do not know. Strabo, who is one of the chief commentators on Druidism, states that the Celts used bow and arrow-they didn't, so how accurate was his information? Tacitus mentions the blood-soaked altars of the Druids of Mona, but how do we KNOW it was human blood? Certainly the Celts did sacrifice animals, as did the Romans, for that matter. As for Halloween and the Druids, all contemporary sources for the Druids do not mention it. So we cannot know if it was, in fact, a Druidic festival, or one adopted by later generations of British. The chief Celtic festival was Samhain (pronounced "sow-en"), which took place at New Year on November 1. http://www.new-life.net/halowen1.htm

Halloween is part of several celebrations for fall.. The celts celebrated thier old religion I beleive in Nov 1... Druids or Celts would sacrifice people in thier celebrations by the 'burning man' a massive cage held together with rope or sinu & held the captives & animals prepared for the fall sacrifice... This was SUPPOSEDLY witnessed by the Romans... Wether this is true or not is being debated... However various bog bodies have been found & it is beleived they were celtic or druid captives strangeled as a human sacrifice...

halloween was not human sacrafice, it was sacrafice of crops and animals but no human sacrafice, i did research on this for a paper in english, it took me weeks to find out the truth. but the celt's enemies were the ones who wrote most about them, druids do not have many written documents about them halloween was originally called: Samhain(pronounced: sow-in) thought to be the devil or evil god, one of the two, it doesnt mean that at all. it has to do with celebrating fall that's all halloween was back in those days, celebration of a season, but its been turned into so much more with all of the changes it has undergone. still there shouldnt be any sacraficing of people, there wasnt back then.