Photo by Graham Cullen Abbey Yoder, 12, and Adrianne Lavala, 15, of Dance Unlimited, perform Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on Friday evening at the Baker Park Band Shell.

They likely will search for candy. Their existence represents a historical search for peace with life and death.

Halloween customs in our time are the modern incarnation of ancient rituals, fears and hopes. For thousands of years some cultures have focused on the dead on the days now represented on calendars as Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

For pagan Tamar Bradley, Oct. 31 is "a very reverent" day, celebrating Samhain, pronounced saw-wayn. She and other pagans will honor their dead and worship Celtic deities tonight in Frederick at her store, The Owl Nest, at 5732 Buckeystown Pike.

Oct. 31 is the pagans' New Year's Eve, she said. It is also the end of the season of light and beginning of the season of darkness, for pagans and Christians.

Coming from an ancient agricultural tradition, the pagans will give thanks for a bountiful harvest, Bradley said.

This particular night, she said, is among the best for communicating with the dead and deities. It begins a somber time of deep spirituality, she said.

The association of the night with fright and evil spirits is not a pagan tradition, she said, but based in Christian misrepresentation.

"Pagans never insinuated that anything evil was wandering the earth" on Oct. 31, Bradley said. "That's more of a Christian viewpoint."

The Christians demonized the pagan practices to try to put a stop to them, she said. The early Christian approach was "join us or be damned for eternity."

The website for Bradley's new age shop lists several events today, including a seminar featuring Satan worshipper Jack D. Winters. He is listed as a founder of the churches of the United Satanic Empire.

On Winters' website he is raising funds to send satanic Bibles to Third World countries.

Bradley said evil was never part of the Oct. 31 Samhain celebration. Celtic deities and the dead were.

Merging rituals

According to the Catholic Church, the pre-Christian Celts believed that Samhain would let the dead come back to haunt earth Oct. 31, the Rev. Dan Goulet of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick said. In an effort to ward off evil spirits and bad outcomes, the Celts established rituals and traditions.

They extinguished home fires, and set distant bonfires to lure evil spirits away from populated places, Goulet said. If evil spirits visited their homes, the Celts hoped to appease them with offerings of treats.

People dressed as evil spirits so they could travel among the spirits undetected, or perhaps to partake of some of the treats, Goulet said.

Bradley said those traditions sprang up in response to Christian demonization.

Many cultures annually honor their dead at about the same time of year, she said.

"We're more similar than we think."

Christians attempted to replace Halloween customs with a tradition of having children go door-to-door on Oct. 31 to pray for all the dead relatives of the household.

That "didn't quite catch on," Goulet said.

The early Christian church established May 13 as the day to honor its saints, or hallows. In 835 Pope Gregory IV moved the saints' day from May 13 to Nov. 1, in an attempt to undo some of the pagan rituals among the Celtic people being converted to Christianity, the American Catholic website states.

The evening before the day was All Hallows' Even. Common usage and pronunciation turned it into Halloween.

By about 1048, Christians had established Nov. 2 as All Souls' Day to honor all the dead, in addition to praying for them on the anniversary of their deaths.

"The purpose of these feasts is to remember those who have died, whether they are officially recognized É as saints or not," the American Catholic website states. "It is a celebration of the 'communion of saints,' which reminds us that the church is not bound by space or time."

The test of time

Pagan traditions have also withstood time.

Tonight, Bradley's group invites people to "join in celebration of our largest holiday."

The pagan website encourages people to bring a picture or item relating to an ancestor or deceased loved one and "a potluck dish to share É after the ritual."

In the United States, familiar customs and crafts such as trick-or-treating and jack o'lanterns came with the wave of Irish immigration in the mid-1800s. The traditions stuck.

That Halloween experience is fun, Bradley said, "more of an Americana (tradition)."

She lets her daughter participate.

The Americana version is unrelated to the pagan Samhain celebration, which Bradley treats seriously.

"This is a day of reverence," she said. "Not the creepy zombie thing."

A Jewish website, myjewishlearning.com, discourages participation in Halloween events whether they are pagan, Christian or entirely secular.

For Goulet, Halloween is "a beautiful night before celebrating the saints who pray for us."

Christians may use Halloween as a launching point to discuss life, death and resurrection, Goulet said. The Christian calendar places the birth date of Christ -- "the light of the world" -- at the darkest time of year, and that date, Dec. 25, date precedes the increasingly long daylight hours.

Contrasting Halloween's darkness and death with Christianity's expression of light, life and hope is what Goulet and the American Catholic website advise.

"Death is not cute," the website states. "Halloween began with martyrs, after all, so strange makeup and skull masks are not out of line."