By Julian L and Jaydon W
Halloween has become an international festival. If you do not already know, this festival occurs on the 31st of October. During this time, people, especially children, go around their neighborhoods during the night wearing “scary” costumes collecting sweets and performing tricks. It was a fun festival, let us dive deeper into this spooky world and ask. What is Halloween and what are its origins?
Halloween was a tradition that originated thousands of years ago in the British Isles, where Celts first built settlements. They celebrated their new year on November the 1st (also known as Samhain) and they believed that before the day before the new year, spirits and monsters would come from the distant forests and roam around their villages and the Celts didn’t like them a lot. One day the Celts came up with a brilliant solution to the problem by offering food and snacks and wearing masks that looked like ghosts and monsters, pretending to have a good time with them so they wouldn’t be recognized as enemies by the spirits and monsters. It was more like a safety practice than a fun activity, which people liked a lot back then.
Gradually, the Celtic New Year became known as All Saint’s Day in Christianity, and the Celtic New Year’s Eve became known as All Hallow’s Day subsequently, which later evolved into Halloween. Like how the Celts wore masks, people celebrating Halloween decided to wear scary costumes covering their entire body. Initially, trick or treating started when economically disadvantaged people went to the houses of wealthier people and received pastries called soul cakes and promised to pray for the house owner’s dead relatives, children later took up the practice, they would go for door-to-door asking for food and money as a gift, in Scotland and Ireland, they would also perform a trick before collecting a gift of mainly fruit, nuts or coins. People like the idea of having gifts at Halloween, thus Trick or Treat became a widespread tradition in Halloween. On top of that, people also started carving turnips and pumpkins as decorations in the house at the same time period, they came up with the name Jack-O-Lantern. The cute but scary container we all use to put our candy in as we go around the neighborhood.
As stated above, the festival of Halloween is unarguably loads of fun and joy for everyone of all ages. Whether you are going out for treats and surprise gifts or watching a scary movie, it surely is one of the best festivals in the world that everyone could agree on in October. Or is it?
Comentários