Today, Walpurgis Night is celebrated in Europe

Thanks to the German classic Goethe with his "Faust", the European intelligentsia began to take a new interest in the so-called Walpurgis Night from April 30 to May 1. According to popular belief, before this night, witches rub themselves with magic ointment, sit on brooms and fly to a ball run by Satan himself. There, after a "report" on what bad things they have done during the year, the witches start a crazy dance, from which in the morning traces of cow and goat hooves remain on the mountain. 

However, all this has already been described many times by the classics, who were so carried away by the "aesthetics" of Walpurgis Night that they completely broke away from its "ethics". And ethics just says that in the old days (Walpurgis Night has its roots in the Christian era) ordinary people who believed that on this night the border between the worlds of the dead and the living temporarily disappears, protected their homes by lighting fires to scare away witches. Sometimes they act more cunningly. In the Czech Republic, for example, sand was poured outside the threshold of the house - they say that by the time the witch counts all the grains of sand, the night will be over. Naturally, no one considered this night a holiday.

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However, already in the 19th century, Walpurgis Nights turned into mass carnivals, and in Finland, for example, it is one of the four main folk holidays of the year along with Christmas, New Year and Midsummer Day.

Photo: Walpurgis Night in Germany Wikipedia