Trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving and dressing up in costumes are activities nearly all Americans think of when the Halloween season rolls around, but the celebration had a different start.
Halloween was originally a Celtic festival called Samhain, which started more than 2,000 years ago in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. The festival, which was held Nov. 1, was a way to mark the new year and the end of summer and the harvest. The Celts believed that on Oct. 31, the boundary between the living and the dead was the thinnest and ghosts could return to earth.
