Halloween: History and Celebration

Halloween has become a very popular festival and is celebrated on a large scale in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong and various other countries. This festival is celebrated on 31st October and so this day is observed as an annual holiday. History of Halloween goes back in the Gaelic culture and was celebrated throughout the North-West Europe. It is also known as the ‘All Hallow’ eve’ and ‘All Saints Day’. This festival is celebrated by the Celtics when they started storing the stock in order to prepare for winter. It is also believed that on October 31st night the boundaries between dead and living people get finished and so the evil spirits tend to harm the planet earth in the form of natural calamities, crops destruction and spread of incurable diseases. This night is also known as ‘Beggar’s Night’ in other parts of the world like Massachusetts, Lowa and Ohio. On this day the souls are remembered with the help of jack o lanterns and turnips. Some turnips are also carved with the help of pumpkins.

This festival was started in 5th century B.C and brought to America in the 1840s. It was started by the Irish immigrants. They started celebrating it by dressing in as destructive ways as possible and by dancing on the bonfires doing their favorite pranks in order to frighten the ghosts that are present.

Halloween party ideas include dressing up in various costumes, going door to door to demand treats and chocolates. It also includes an activity called trick or treat in which the person is asked to answer a confectionary question or a treat is demanded in option. This activity is becoming famous among children in various parts of Europe such as Unites States, Canada, United Kingdom, Norway and Spain.

Halloween in USA is not an official holiday. It is considered as a festival for children and so the government offices and public transport run on a regular basis. It is celebrated in the evening with families and relatives. Children and elder people dress up in fancy costumes and masks and demand and roam around in their areas demanding sweets and treats.

As this day is celebrated with great enthusiasm, there are various industries who dedicate their first two weeks in the preparations of Halloween. Halloween festival makes the second highest grossing money in the United States in a single day. A huge amount of money is spent by people on this day. The main attraction of Halloween is the jack o lantern which is made of pumpkin. Various weird and frightening faces are carved on pumpkins and are used in houses.

Some of the symbols of this festival include skeleton faces and spooks as they develop a contact between the real world and the spiritual world.

There are various movies that are made on Halloween festival. These movies include The nightmare before Christmas, The Witches of East wick, Psycho, Ghost busters, Gremlins, The Addams family, Something Else and Resident Evil. Besides this, there are also some television episodes based on this theme.

Games on Halloween include Zombies Surrounded, Pumpkin Remover, Steak and Jake, Mummy Tombs, Litch Halloween, Darkness Springs, Phantom mansion Indigo, Singoween, Divine Intervention and Khronos.

There are also various food stuffs that are associated with Halloween. These include Soul cakes, Colcannon, Caramel Corn, Toffees of Bon fire, Candies shaped in pumpkins, Caramel apples and Barmbrack.

Popular scary Halloween costumes include those of ghosts, skeletons, witches, devils and vampires whereas popular non scary characters include fairies, angels, princesses, animals used in farms and flowers. Costumes that were used in the early days represent the famous Pagan and Gothic nature of Halloween.

Halloween theme is nowadays also used in wedding cakes. Most popular Halloween cakes include Zombie fingers cake, Black Spider cake, Bloody Eyeballs cake, Vampire Bat cake, Cockroach cake, Kitty litter cake and Bleeding Heart cake.

Halloween is probably the only festival where we are allowed, by custom, to scare people. Thus, Halloween comes as a change in our daily monotonous life and with a very different tinge of tricks and mischief. It brings us closer to our dear and near ones. And the best part of it is that you can have as many different types of themes as you can think of.