Happy Halloween!

It has been said that Halloween’s origins date back to the Ancient Celtic Festival of Samhain.

What is now more of an American tradition, originated from the Celts, who lived in and around what is now known as Ireland, the UK and northern France, celebrated ‘Halloween’, believing that on this night, “the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred”.

Dating as far back as 2000 years ago, “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.”

“Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in…the southern colonies [of America]. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge” (http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween)

Halloween was celebrated in Cape Town at the Zombie Walk and Festival. It started in the Company Gardens, and ended at the V&A Waterfront, and was described as the Mother City’s very own zombie apocalypse!