Halloween, or Hallowe'en, is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, telling of ghost stories, visiting "haunted houses" and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western world, most commonly in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and occasionally in parts of Australia and New Zealand.
______________________________________________________
Trick-or-treating:
The main event for children of modern Halloween in the United States and Canada is trick-or-treating, in which children disguise themselves in costumes and go door-to-door in their neighborhoods, ringing each doorbell and yelling "trick or treat!" to solicit a gift of candy or similar items.
Game & activities consist of:
The imagery surrounding Halloween:
is largely an amalgamation of the Halloween season itself, nearly a century of work from American filmmakers and graphic artists, and a rather commercialized take on the dark and mysterious. Halloween imagery tends to involve death, magic, or mythical monsters.
Traditional characters:
include ghosts, ghouls, witches, vampires, bats, owls, crows, vultures, pumpkinmen, black cats, spiders, goblins, zombies, mummies, skeletons, and demons.
Costumes
Halloween Costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. Costumes are also based on themes other than traditional horror, such as those of characters from television shows, movies and other pop culture icons.
Costume sales
BIGresearch conducted a survey for the National Retail Federation in the United States and found that 53.3% of consumers planned to buy a costume for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average (up 10 dollars from the year before). They were also expected to spend $4.96 billion in 2006, up significantly from just $3.3 billion the previous year.
Types of Symbols:
Particularly in America, symbolism is inspired by classic horror films, which contain fictional figures like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and The Mummy. Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween.
The carved pumpkin, lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. These lanterns are usually carved from a turnip or swede (or more uncommonly a mangelwurzel). The carving of pumpkins is associated with Halloween in North America, where pumpkins were readily available and much larger, making them easier to carve than turnips. Many families that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face and place it on their home's doorstep after dark.
Traditional Colors:
Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween, followed by yellow.
Symbolism
Black -- death, night, witches, black cats, bats, vampires, fear, ghostliness, silence.
Orange -- pumpkins, Jack O' lanterns, Autumn, the turning leaves, fire, sunset.
Traditional Halloween Food:
Traditional Halloween Treats:
Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, candy apples (also known as toffee, taffy or caramel apples) are a common Halloween treat made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes rolling them in nuts. Candy apples and caramel apples will always be associated with Halloween treats and anything with nuts is popular too. (like pecan pies) Rice crispy treats, candy corn, roasted pumpkin seeds and very traditional popcorn balls goes back many many years.
Spooky Theme Dishes:
It's very traditional to have spooky theme dishes at all Halloween parties. The food will be named spooky names like bloody bat wings (which is simply chicken wings in tomato sauce), it will look spooky or ugly, and the food is always made to look eerie by being served in ceramic bone pots or cooked in black cast iron cauldrons. Food cooked on a camp fire at night gives a spooky effect that is also popular. Foods like maggot stew, Frankenstein stew and Witches Black Brew Stew are just to name a few.
Traditional Pranks:
- Some teenagers in Canada and the States occasionally play pranks on unsuspecting victims like throwing toilet paper over someone's house and yard, (known as rolling yards or TPing)
- ding-dong-ditch (A game where the prankster knocks on a door and runs away before someone answers the door),
- stealing young trick-or-treaters' candy. (which is frowned upon) but done by the way of scaring them and taking their treats.
- Egging or "egg" peoples houses, which usually is throwing eggs, but some people use apples, potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables (like watermelon) on the roof of someone's house.
- Another way some teens may amuse themselves is by finding a house with candy they like and going back to it over and over with different masks on.
Halloween is celebrated in several countries:
Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western world, most commonly in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and occasionally in parts of Australia and New Zealand.
United States & Canada:
Upon receiving trick-or-treaters, the house occupants (who might also be in costume) often hand out small candies, miniature chocolate bars, nuts, loose change, soda pop, stickers, or even crayons and pencils. Some homes will use sound effects and fog machines to help establish an eerie atmosphere. Other less scary house decoration themes might be used to entertain younger visitors. Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases, pumpkin-shaped buckets, shopping bags, or large plastic containers. Large parties are commonly held on Halloween in which games like bobbing for apples and spooky story telling are common.
Ireland
All over Ireland, huge bonfires are lit. Young children in disguise are warmly received by their neighbors with gifts of "fruit, miniature chocolate bars, loose change, peanuts and of course sweets" for the "Halloween Party", whilst their older male siblings play innocent pranks on bewildered victims. Some homes will put up decorations including Halloween lights. Children have the week off from school for Halloween, and it is common for teenagers and for college students to spend weeknights out and about with friends, pranking and causing mischief, if not trick-or-treating themselves, and perhaps even "egging" [throwing eggs at] houses, drinking alcohol, throwing bangers and setting off fireworks.
Lebanon
In Lebanon a similar holiday is celebrated on the eve of Saint Barbara's Day (December 4). Children disguised in costumes also go trick-or-treating to invoke the saint's wandering in the mountains.
Scotland
In Scotland, children are known as "guisers", though this term is now going into decline. In the past, the children going guising would dress in various (often home-made) costumes and disguises: hence (dis)'guisers'. The most popular costumes were skeletons, witches and various forms of scary fiends, complete with papier-mâché masks, though nurses' or cowboys' outfits were also given a rather incongruous outing. They would then form small bands of mixed-age children, the older ones trailing their younger siblings behind them, and venture out into the darkness each with their lantern. Until at least the 1970s the traditional Halloween light carried by Scottish children was not the now ubiquitous pumpkin but a 'tumshie lantern' made, as with a pumpkin, by hollowing out a very large swede/yellow turnip ("tumshie" in the West of Scotland dialect of Scots) and carving a scary face, through which shone the candle inside. Then, each carrying their tumshie lantern, they would knock on all the neighbors' doors where the eldest or boldest of the group would ask, "Are ye wantin' any guisers?". If the answer was yes, the children would be invited inside where the grown-ups would pretend to try to guess the identity of each guiser, who then had to impress the company with a song, poem, trick, joke or dance—known as their 'party piece'—in order to earn treats. Today, however, they simply say "trick or treat" in order to earn sweets. Traditionally, nuts, oranges, apples and dried fruit as well as "sweeties" were offered, though children might earn a small amount of cash, usually no more than 50p. In some houses the neighbors would have prepared a pail or basin filled with apples ready for the game of 'dookin' for apples'. The children had to 'dook' (Scots) their faces into the water with their hands behind their backs to try to pick up an apple by biting into it.
England and Wales
In England and Wales, trick-or-treating does occur, although the practice is regarded by some as a nuisance or even a menacing form of begging. In some areas, households have started to put decorations on the front door to indicate that trick-or-treaters are welcome, the idea being that trick-or-treaters will avoid a house not participating in the custom. Tricks currently play a less prominent role, though Halloween night is often marked by vandalism such as soaping windows, egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees.
In Welsh
Halloween is known as Nos Galan Gaeaf (the beginning of the new year). Spirits are said to walk around and a "white lady" ghost is sometimes said to appear. Bonfires are lit on hillsides to mark the night.
