Spooky nite for kids!

It was so much fun yesterday, kids clad in cute outfits knocking on each door & shouting "Trick or Treeeat!" ...We even ran out of candies and had to buy more! They were just swarming @ our door - guess the news passed around quickly that we gave candies generously (hee hee..not that i did!). some of them just came in PJs...wonder what they were ! We took a walk around our neighbourhood to see some spooky costumes and decors. One of the neighbours had a projector outside the house playing "Harry Potter" for kids to watch...
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That got me to thinking whats this halloween thingy all about..is it really spooky or some celebration like how we do during our harvest seasons or was it like our Navarathri Golu where kids & parents go from house to house...(that last one was my MIL's ideology - just stole it!)

Here we go ...
Halloween is said to have dated 2000 yrs ago, when a group called "CELTS" who lived in what is now - Ireland, France region celebrated their new year on November 1.This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. . For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands and the pope decided to designate Nov 1st as All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas and the night before it began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.