By Ava Cunningham
Imagine someone invented time travel but only to the past(you can go back to the future of the time you came from but no farther than that). You could go see any major event or watch a super old movie, or just see how people lived way back in the day. You could even go back and look at how something changed through history. Let’s do that! Let’s go look at the history of Halloween!
You time travel with a small, handheld device. You can type in the date you want or a number of years back. You can also choose a place to be. Then you press a yellow button and it will take you to that time. To see the beginnings of Halloween, you are going to have to go back 2,000 years to Ireland. You press the yellow button and suddenly you are sucked into a void of color. You fly backwards with scenes from different time periods flying past.
You land in the middle of a big open field. It’s dark outside and there is a huge bonfire in the middle of the field. Someone comes up to you. They have a mask that makes them look like they have the head of a bear.
“Who are you?” You ask. “What’s going on?”
You realize they probably speak another language and they wouldn’t understand but the time travel device starts spitting out words. The person seems to understand it and speaks with the same funny-sounding words. The device translates it for you:
“This is the Celtic festival of Samhain (sow-in). We are celebrating our new year. Tomorrow on November 1st it will be the start of the new year. This evening, the spirits of the dead come back to earth. Since it is the end of the harvest and winter is coming soon, there will be many deaths and this night is the bridge between the living and the dead worlds.”
“Wow,” you say. “What are they doing with the fires?”
“They are the sacred fires lit by the Druids. The druids tell us the future and light these fires to commemorate it. The people around them are sacrificing crops and animals as gifts to the deities. We are just finishing up. Would you like to help relight the hearth fires?”
“Yes!” You say.
The person hands you a mask that looks like a bobcat and a stick. The stick has some sort of coating on the end. The person leads you to the fire. A few other people have sticks too. They light the coated end of their sticks in the bonfire. The bonfire is huge and super hot but you follow their lead. The person with the bear mask leads you to a smaller fire pit that looks like it was recently put out. You and the others with fire sticks to light the fire.
“We light these fires to form the Druid fire so it can protect us through the long hard winter,” the person in the bear mask explains.
The time travel/translation device beeps at you. It is a warning so that you won’t get stuck in the past. If you stay for too long, you won’t be able to get back to the future. You thank the person for showing you, return the mask, and then press the yellow button. You see the same scenes as before but you are flying forward this time. You land back in front of your house thinking about what you just saw. Then you go inside and tell everyone about it.
References:
https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/holidays/halloween-ideas/g4607/history-of-halloween/
