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As with so many other preexistent pagan festivals, Christian societies seem to have adopted some of these practices and gradually given them specifically religious shapes and meanings. Thus, by about the 12th century, the backdrop of general "spookiness" created by the "Samhain" festival had become imbued with the veneration of the dead and with asserting the enduring claims of the departed upon those still oscene living. It expressed this through masses, processions and the lusty tolling of bells to ward off demonic spirits. Manifestations of this general theme varied considerably from place to place: the opening and decoration of tombs in Naples, the reconsecration of graves in Brittany, the purchasing of extra candles and torches to stave off the encircling darkness in Bristol, and so on.

As with so many other preexistent pagan festivals, Christian societies seem to have adopted some of these practices and gradually given them specifically religious shapes and meanings. Thus, by about the 12th century, the backdrop of general "spookiness" created by the "Samhain" festival had become imbued with the veneration of the dead and with asserting the enduring claims of the departed upon those still oscene living. It expressed this through masses, processions and the lusty tolling of bells to ward off demonic spirits. Manifestations of this general theme varied considerably from place to place: the opening and decoration of tombs in Naples, the reconsecration of graves in Brittany, the purchasing of extra candles and torches to stave off the encircling darkness in Bristol, and so on.

These and other old-country customs morphed halloween and melded among immigrant populations in North America, gradually overwhelming the disdain for such celebrations among the Puritans costumes and other early arrivals. oscene Concerted efforts were made by immigrant leaders and societies to hold onto and even to rejuvenate old customs as a means of maintaining ethnic distinctiveness. Folk revelry in the form of pranks, music, costumes and so on proved far more adaptable to the New World than folk-religious halloween traditions did.

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