Halloween's History, Very Concise

"No One Suspects A Thing; Keep Going" by Herr D on heromachine.com.

I am unsure of origin story for Halloween. Will you blog upon?

[pause] I'll give you the quick version.

The Catholic Church was too wise to just say, "Don't do that" about any pre-Christian celebrations they ran into. They said, instead, "Do it our way because you should." In this way, they were able to indoctrinate millions of people and subsume old religions and practices.

Halloween is the one that got away.

A fishing reference?

It's accurate. All Saint's Day was the Catholic idea. Celebrate a whole lot of saints at once, the way the United States tried 'President's Day' for a while. It was to follow All Hallow's Eve, which I think was Samhain (?) beforehand. Kind of like Day of the Dead in Mexico.

Notions of death reversal.

More like spirits could come back.

Like 'The Crow?'

More like anybody randomly might step out of the afterworld and do whatever. From there, it was heavily commercialized. Capitalism changed it much more than the Catholic Church did. That's about it, really.

Thank you.