The Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, named for Saman, the lord of death, was usually celebrated on Nov. 1. It was considered ``summer's end,'' a time of cold and darkness for the Celtic people of Britain, Ireland and northern France. They believed that on Samhain, all the souls of the people who had died during the year would return to roam the earth. The Celts wore costumes to scare the spirits away and built huge bonfires for protection.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/living/9995181.htm?1c

So is Samhain the Lord of death or just summer's end? How does this relate to modern halloween? Festival or Satanic God?

I thought the Celtic-Pagan festival for the Summers end was the Autumn Equinox?

the way i understand it and i could well be wrong is the following.,

Samhain was the original festival that Christianity hijacked and called harvest festival. it is when the God element of the wiccan belief system 'dies', is cut down (like the corn in the field) the goedess element ends her mother cycle and enters the crone stage of belief with the shortening of days and cold temperature.

All this is honoured and celebrated as Yule is the time that the God is reborn into the new year etc.... I understood Samhain to be based on this, and its link to the dead is that as we mourn the 'death of the god' we also mourn and remember those who have passed over into the next realm. How this ties in to ancient ancestral worship I dont know , i have not researched it enough to be able to offer an opinion.

Its worth remembering in ancient times the Celts and saxons etc were still largly tribal in their judicial system and the isolation of villages and the word of mouth transferance of knowledge (by and large) left religeon open to misconceptions and distortions, its also worth remembering that in the time that Britain was divided into saxons celts and picts christianity had arrived and paganism had largly had to become a covert religeon.

Basically although modern paganism has its roots in ancient religeons, there were a large number of ancient religeons, sometimes tribal society had an effect on interpretation and practice and the overthrow of these belief systems with Christianity opened anti pagan propaganda to be spread... some of this filters through into our understanding of it today....

I will post more as i further my research into this as this is what i will do as soon as i have moved house...

i've probably raised more questions than given answers but i hope i helped somehow... as i said, i still have a lot of research to do...