Halloween!

   October is the month in the middle of Autumn, when the equinox takes place. However, if there is something October is really famous for that is Halloween!

THE HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN

   Halloween (also spelled Hallowe'en) is a festival which takes place on October 31st. It started as the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced /ˈsa:ʊin/), but it was influenced by the Roman festival of Pomona (goddess of fruit and trees). Both festivities were related to the end of the harvest season. Later, the Christian church moved All Saint's Day to November 1st to convince people to stop celebrating Samhain, but it was not a successful move. In the 19th century, Irish and Scottish immigrants carried the custom to the USA, where it evolved again.

  The Celts believed that on the night of Samhain, the dead walked on earth again. Some of those spirits were evil and they scared people and played nasty tricks on them. So the Celts started to dress up as ghosts. They wanted the evil spirits to believe that they were spirits too. Nowadays, people still dress up as ghosts, but also as other kinds of supernatural beings, such as movie monsters, famous people and pop characters.

JACK O'LANTERN

   In different parts of the British Isles, people carried lanterns made of turnips or potatoes to light their ways on Halloween night. They carved scary faces on the vegetables and they called them 'Jack o'lanterns'. In the USA, people discovered that pumpkins were easier to carve than turnips and Jack o'lantern got its most famous form. But was there a real Jack o'lantern?

   An Irish legend tells the story of a nasty old man called Stingy Jack. He used to play tricks on his family and friends and nobody liked him. Once, Stingy Jack was able to trick the devil himself. The devil agreed not to take Jack's soul when he died. Years later, Jack passed away but God did not allow him to go to Heaven, and their old deal prevented the devil from having Stingy Jack in Hell. So Jack was doomed to walk on earth forever as a ghost. He put a lump of burning coal into a carved turnip to light his way. People who saw Stingy Jack wandering with his lantern started to call him 'Jack of the lantern'. Some time later, the nickname was shortened to 'Jack o'lantern'.

WHAT TO DO AT HALLOWEEN

   There are different ways of celebrating Halloween night, depending on your age. Small children dress up and their parents take them trick or treating around the neighbourhood. They knock on their neighbours' doors and ask for sweets. If a neighbour refuses to give them any treats, the children can play a trick on them. Teenagers and adults' Halloween is a bit different. They are too old to go trick or treating, so they go to parties, watch horror films and tell stories to scare each other.

   Other Halloween traditions include visiting haunted houses, walking corn mazes or going to the cinema to watch horror films like Hocus Pocus or The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

AND YOU?

   Are you ready for Halloween? Have you got your pumpkin and your scary costume? How are you going to celebrate? Leave us a comment!


FUN FACTS ABOUT HALLOWEEN:

  This is one of the most famous Halloweeen songs: The Monster Mash, by Bobby Pickett.

  Orange and black are the colours of Halloween. Orange is related to Autumn and the harvest, and black is related to darkness and death.

  And here is a list of some Halloween classics you can watch this year:
1) The Nightmare Before Christmas
2) Gremlins
3) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
4) Coraline
5) Beetlejuice
6) Casper
7) Frankenweenie
8) Hotel Transylvania
9) The Addams Family
10) Labyrinth
11) Corpse Bride