Happy Halloween! TIME -- The Long Global History of Ghosts

 

 

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

 

Tithi Bhattacharya for Time reminds us of the Irish immigrant roots of Halloween:

 

"Almost two centuries ago, Irish immigrants brought a festival called Samhain to North America. Samhain had ancient pagan roots. It was celebrated as a harvest festival at the end of October, but also marked a day when the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest. The Irish brought Samhain to the New World in the late 1840s when a devastating potato famine forced millions of them to leave Ireland. They came to the New World aboard “coffin ships,” thus named for their high death rates. These folks carried with them a kinship and familiarity with death.

 

It is fitting that Samhain, now transformed into Halloween, should still be celebrated with pumpkins and ghosts in modern America, bearing echoes of harvests past and a historic reminder that the boundaries between life and death were indeed thin."

 

KJ