The first concrete plan was laid in around the year 600 by Pope Gregory I (произносится как Gregory the first). Pope Gregory recognised that Christianity was still a young movement, struggling to gain acceptance, and he knew he would never persuade the Pagans to end their ways and take up Christianity all in one step. He said: "If you should come across a group of people worshiping a tree, so rather than cut the tree down and tell them that they were ignorant and in error, so instead consecrate it to Christ and tell them to keep meeting as they were accustomed to meeting at the same spot". But the old ways persisted and the Church's success was mixed. The regular folk were not really interested in Christianity. The idea that you had to wait until the next life to have a good life was not exactly a popular idea. So the Christians had to make Christianity more attractive to the Celts, and so they basically grafted on the new religion onto the practices of the old religion. By the 8th century, the church had had enough of trying to accommodate the Pagans, Pope Gregory III (the third) decided to challenge Pagans' beliefs head on by turning their most important holiday, Samhain, in to a day of the Church. November 1st was claimed as All Saints' Day, a day to honour those Christian saints who did not already have a saint's day of their own. All Saint's Day is also known as All Hallows' Day, the word Hallow being equivalent to Saint. It was the eve of All Hallows that became known as All Hallow's Evening. (У этого американца отвратное произношение, он проглатывает слова, вот что я только смогла понять из этого предложения): and through a corruption of the Eve thing, Hallow Eve, we got the contemporary word Halloween. The Church had taken the first step in absorbing the ancient holiday of Samhain, but there were still many Pagans who carried on the old beliefs and practices anyway. People continued to dress in straw costumes or in animal skins, continued to put out offerings for the souls of the dead who were travelling at that particular time. Continued to do much of what they had been accustomed to doing, but now doing it under the name of Halloween rather than under the name of Samhain. Я немного дольше сделала, чтобы закончить что говорил мужчина в конце.
