WE humans are a strange species. As complex and intelligent as we are, we are also on the other hand given to mindless and irrational behaviour bordering on acts of total ignorance. As we construct rockets and scale mountains and will stop at nothing to explore and discover unknown truths, we sometimes act quite silly. Really! Don’t be offended, after all ‘We’re all human’ as the saying goes.

Let’s talk about Halloween which comes around the end of October, most people around the world start to prepare for this “fun filled” festival. All kinds of scary costumes from goblins to fairies, from ghosts to vampires and strange characters are made or bought. Houses are decorated in the same kind of themes and front lawns turned into cemeteries. And yes we must not forget the pumpkins that are cut in shapes of faces with candles lit inside. Kids roam neighbourhoods with baskets ringing doorbells asking ‘trick or treat’? Give them sweets or toys and they go away happily, turn them away and they jokingly play pranks.

Parents go all out to make it a real treat for youngsters. All this in the name of some festival we hardly know anything about. What’s wrong with a little innocent fun, one might ask? After all life is so boring and we love to play in the dark.

But let’s really delve into the darkness of Halloween – and it is pretty dark in there.

About 1300 years ago, in the British Isles, a lot of people were into the practice of ‘nature religion’ known as ‘Wicca’ meaning “wise ones”. The word “witch” comes from the same word. Now these people used spells and magic on a person or thing. They worshipped the mother Earth, Sun, Moon and the stars. They met every Friday night and chanted spells and performed rituals. Now witches always stated that they did not worship the Devil but just used nature and its powers to make their spells work. But the fact of the matter is that using any kind of power in a negative way and obtaining that power through questionable means is in no way ‘harmless’.

In the early days we also hear and read about the ‘druids’. They called themselves ‘men of the oaks’ as they worshipped and revered oak trees. They were a group of men who dressed in white robes and worshipped the sun god. The night of October 31, (Halloween), was extremely important to the druids. And this, my friends is what the origin of this horrific night is all about.

On this night, they would wear white robes with hoods, carry (Irish) Celtic crosses and sickles and walk out in a procession. They began by killing a male slave and dragging him by a rope fastened to his left ankle. They walked up to houses and shouted something similar to “Trick or treat”. The ‘treat’ was that the people in the house give a slave girl or any other female in the house. If anyone refused, they used the blood of the dead slave to draw a six-pointed star on that house. If they were given a female, they presented the people with a pumpkin with a face carved on it.

Inside it was a candle made from human grease (tallow), which was supposed to keep the house safe from evil spirits. Thus they would carry on their scary tour till they had visited all the houses of the village and then came to their final ritual of the night.

In the woods, the slaves were killed at the places marked as sacred to the druids. Then a fire, called “bonefire”, was lit in which all the bones of these victims were used. Now we know where the word “bonfire” came from.

Why was all this done on the night of October 31? Here is why and it gets weirder.

On this night, it was believed that the veil between the living and the dead worlds was the thinnest and the living from the two worlds could communicate with the dead and take help from the evil spirits. And since this night marks the onset of the Winter Solstice, their sun god would retreat to his underworld.

While they set about doing their satanic rites they invoked the companions of ‘the horned hunter of the night’s’ spirits to take the lives of the people whose houses they had marked earlier and who had refused to “treat” them. Witches who practiced black magic too danced throughout this night calling on the spirits of the dead. Then they too sat around a fire and related their success stories which were written in their ‘Book of shadows’.

How horrific, gruesome and barbaric is all this! But to understand the entire practice of this dreadful night, we must first look into who the druids actually were. We see them as wise old men with long white beards and robes in movies and read about them in fictional tales of wizardry.

How wrong and deceiving is all this. Who and what was ‘druidism’ all about will take up another entire topic of its own. Since they left no written records of their so-called religion or practices, we can only rely on historians to give their own versions. And even though there is a lot written about them over many centuries, their actual beliefs remain a mystery. But what yours truly would really like to know is why do we indulge in doing stuff without knowing the real background of it all?

It has been estimated that more money and preparation is done for Halloween than on Christmas in the West. There is nothing to “celebrate” or “observe” about Halloween, least of all being “innocent fun”.

So, ‘trick or treat’ anyone? You must be kidding!