Samhain | Celtic Festival, Paganism, Wicca, Halloween, & Bonfires | Britannica

Many of the holidays we think of as Christian actually grow from much older, pagan roots. Take Halloween, for example. The earliest written sources about it come from after the Christianization of Europe—but the customs themselves reach far deeper. From Celtic Samhain to Norse Vetrnætr (Winter Nights), this season marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter—a sacred time when the veil between worlds was thin, and offerings were made to the ancestors. When Christianity spread, it di