Halloween
Halloween
Halloween
States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It has roots in the Celtic festival of
Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular
celebration. It is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious
rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday
we know today. Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition and it was thought of
as a day when the dead could return to Earth, and ancient Celts would light bonfires and
wear costumes to disguise from the ghosts. The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic
Hallows period of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and the Roman festival of Feralia
all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween.
In the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious connotation, becoming a
more secular community-based children's holiday.
The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish
variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even ("evening"), that is, the night before All Hallows
Day. Up through the early 20th century, the spelling "Hallowe'en" was frequently used.
Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending
costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting
haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and
watching horror films.