No-one ever seems to wonder where the
tradition of wearing
masks on Halloween comes from.
Halloween was originally a
Celtic Festival called
Samhain (now called All Hallow's Day), which marked
The Day of the Dead, on which day it was believed that the
ghosts of one's
ancestors rose from their graves, and hovered close to the living.
The Celts believed that they could
communicate with them through rituals performed on All Hallow's.
On the night before All Hallows, All Hallows'een (or
Halloween), the Celts believed that
devils would rise and try to trick them into thinking they were their ancestors. It was
believed that if you communicated with these devils, they would
kill your soul and take
posession of your body, wreaking
havoc on your loved ones.
So the night before All Hallow's, they would wear masks (
albeit not quite as
glamorous ones as these days!) so the devils would pass them off as other devils and leave them alone, saving themselves the whole bother of having their souls
killed and family
destroyed.