Maybe it’s extremely cliché, but Halloween might just be Sunset Hill Funeral Home & Cemetery’s favorite holiday.
And not just because people adorn their lawn with inflatable ghosts and zombies and hang plastic body parts from the Bradford Pear in the front yard. I mean, yes, what funeral home and cemetery staff wouldn’t chuckle at the thought of families decorating their dead-free homes with fake coffins and cheesy headstones?
But that’s not why Sunset Hill adores Halloween. Instead, this funeral home loves the history and tradition of the holiday, two things that are often shadowed by candy and costumes when Halloween comes around.
Halloween originates from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which took place more than 2,000 years ago. Celebrated on November 1st, the beginning of the dark, cold winter, Samhain marked the Celts’ new year, a time often associated with human death.
According to Celtic beliefs, the night before the new year opened the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead, and the ghosts of the dead would return to earth, during which they would celebrate Samhain.
Their celebration included building huge sacred bonfires where animal and crop sacrifices were made, and the Celtics dressing up in costumes of animal heads and skins, and Celtic priests making predictions about the future.
When Romans took over most of the Celtic territory, they combined two traditional Roman festivals with the Samhain celebration. The first of the two was Feralia, a commemoration of the dead, taking place in late October. The second was an honorary day for the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, Pomona, whose symbol is the apple. History shows that this could possibly explain the much-loved Halloween tradition of “bobbing for apples.” My favorite!
Years later, Christianity had began to take over the Celtic lands, and Pope Boniface IV named November 1st “All Saints’ Day” to honor saints and martyrs. Thanks a lot, Pope…I guess Sunset Hill is gonna have to do something special for our fearless leader, Bob Herr, in honor of his saintlihood!
History maintains that the Pope was probably creating a church-sanctioned holiday to replace the Celtic festival of the dead. Leave it to the Pope for ruining our fun!
This new celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas, meaning All Saints’ Day in the Middle English tongue. The night before the festivities, also known as Samhain, was changed to “All-hallows Eve,” and is now known adoringly as our favorite holiday, Halloween!
200 years later, the Christian church decided they love celebrating the dead as much as Sunset Hill does, and made November 2nd “All Souls’ Day” to honor those who have crossed over. Similar to Samhain, the holiday is celebrated with big bonfires, parades, and costumes, much like our Halloween is celebrated today.
Honor the dead this year by touring Sunset Hill Funeral Home and Cemetery, where you can see the history and tradition that lies within the walls of a place that celebrates death every day of the year. You might even get to see some coffins and cheesy tombstones – although they’re probably not for decoration.
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