Happy Hall0ween!

  Some folklorists believe that Halloween goes way back thousands of years to the Roman festival of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, while others argue that it holds its roots in the Festival of the Dead, a holiday that has been celebrated all over the world for centuries as a way of honoring the dead after every harvest, the last one being in October. However, historian Nicolas Rogers believes that Halloween most likely owes its popularity to the Celtic festival of Samhain. The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year." It also closely coincides with the Catholic holiday All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) based on the doctrine that the souls of the faithful who at death have not been cleansed would be trapped in purgatory.