Most of the stuff we think of when we think of Halloween – the candy, the outlandish costumes, the scariness – has a long history.About 2,000 years ago, the Celts lived in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. They celebrated their New Year's on Nov. 1, a day they saw as a demarcation line between summer and winter. The last day of the year, (their version of New Year's Eve), was marked with the festival of Samhain (Sah-ween), their biggest and most significant holiday. The thinking was that during that night, the souls of everybody who died during the previous year traveled into the otherworld.These souls, in the form of ghosts, fairies and spirits, could be mischievous and play tricks on the living. Their presence, the Celts believed, made it easier for their priests, or druids, to make predictions about the coming year. Here's how some of their traditions became ours: RELIGION Halloween, Celt-style, was adapted more than 1,000 years ago by the Cath...
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, and yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams