Ghosts and goblins and ghouls, oh my!

That's what many of us will be thinking this week as Halloween lurks just around the corner. But how many of us realize that — like much of what we do and say here on terra firma — Halloween also has a celestial origin.

That's right. It all comes down to the seasons, and to our planet's orbit around the sun.

Today we associate the beginning of each season with the equinoxes and solstices. For example, we listen as the TV weather reporter explains that autumn began on Sept. 22, when the sun crossed the celestial equator on its way south, and that winter will begin on Dec. 21, when the sun reaches its southernmost point in the daytime sky. We don't even think about this anymore; we just recognize these dates as the beginning of new seasons. But it wasn't always this way.

To ancient Germanic and Celtic societies, the equinoxes and solstices marked not the beginning of the seasons, but the midpoints. The beginnings came with what they knew as "cross-quarter" dates.

Four cross-quarter dates exist throughout the year, and each has become a minor holiday: Feb. 2, or Groundhog Day; May 1, or May Day; Aug. 1, or Lammas Day; and Oct. 31, or Halloween.

To the Celts, winter began with Halloween or, as they called it, Samhain (summer's end), which marked the transition between summer and winter, light and dark, life and death. This was also the Celtic New Year's eve, when people celebrated the occasion with a great fire festival to encourage the sun not to vanish. On this frightful evening, people danced around massive bonfires to repel demons, but left their doors open in hopes that kind spirits of loved ones might join them around their hearths.

So where did all the ghosts, goblins and ghouls come in? Well, that goes back in time as well. It was in later pagan and Christian traditions that people went out in masks and robes to frighten away evil; some even carried hollow turnips with candles inside from farm to farm demanding food to honor an old god, Muck Olla.

So this Halloween, while you're dressing up in scary outfits or pilfering the chocolate bars from your kids' trick-or-treat bags, think about the origin of it all.

Like much else in our modern world Halloween, too, came from the stars.

To find out more about Dennis Mammana and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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