Costumed trick-or-treating takes its inspiration from the Celtic holiday Samhain—“summer’s end” in Irish—more than 2,000 years ago. Samhain marked New Year’s Day and fell around ...

When Julius Caesar wrote a series of histories about the Gallic Wars around 53 B.C.E., he mentioned a fascinating group of ...

Whether or not human sacrifice occurred, Samhain was a supernatural period. The Celts were a pastoral people, so winter was a lean time for them, and the end of summer meant a dramatic shift in their ...