Halloween Facts and Trivia

Halloween - is a fun holiday celebrated annually every Oct 31st

- also called All Hallow's Eve and All Saint's Eve

- usually observed by many western countries

- celebration begins at sunset and ends at midnight

Halloween History and Origin

Halloween originates from the ancient festival celebrated mainly in Scotland and Ireland known as "Samhain" which roughly means "summer ends" from Old Irish vocabulary. It is a Gaelic festival similar to "Calan Gaeaf" celebrated by the ancient Britons.

It is believed that during this time, the border between this world (world of the living) and the "other world" (world of the dead) is accessible allowing dead spirits, either harmful or harmless, to pass through.

Dead ancestors's spirits are invited home while harmful spirits are warded off. They would also do a "cleansing ritual" by building two bonfires side by side and people with their slaughtered livestock will walk between them.

They also practise "divination" through the use of food and drinks. Now, it is coined as "prediction" using crystal balls, tarot cards, astrology, palm reading and many others.

Halloween and other current traditions usually came from the Old English era.

Halloween Activities

- includes trick or treating in costumes and guising, costume parties, ghost hunting, scary story telling, pranks, watching horror flicks and others.

source credit: en.wikipedia.org

Symbols

In ancient times and probably even today, young men in Scotland would impersonate dead spirits by wearing white clothes and masking, veiling or blackening their faces.

Therefore, the wearing of costumes and masks were practised way back since the aforesaid ancient festivals. It stemmed from the ancient belief to ward off evil/harmful spirits by disguising as a harmful spirit themselves to avoid harm.

Bonfires were also used during those festivals to cast flames on the bones of slaughtered livestock after their cleansing ritual. Bonfires were still used today during scary story telling and other festive activities. Bonfires symbolizes light.

Traditionally, they used turnips or rutabagas to make lanterns but since pumpkins are readily available and larger, making it easier to carve into frightening or comical faces, it is more widely used today especially in North America.

Customary, Scottish and Irish people would put a lighted candle on the window to honor the departed. Nowadays, people would placed a lighted candle on the center of the carved pumpkin and leave them on their doorsteps or used them as home decors during All Hallow's Eve.

Jack-o-lantern which was used by young children during their treat or trick was an old Halloween symbol since the early 20th century. It is usually made of pumpkins too.

Halloween Decors

Halloween symbols were used as halloween party decors such as black cats, bats, spiders/spider webs, pumpkins, skeletons, improvised or fabricated corpse and scarecrow.

source credit: en.wikipedia.org

In the old times, halloween costumes were inspired from classic horror films like Frankeinstein's monster and horror literature like Dracula. Traditional characters were also impersonated like the devil, ghosts, demons, zombies, werewolves, vampires, witches, scarecrows and dead people.

These modern days, anything related to death, evil, monsters, magic and mythical creatures were also used. You may take the good side or the bad side, you choose.

The Top 5 Halloween Costumes

As voted by more than 8,000 shoppers according to Time for Kids Almanac 2008

1. Princess

2. Pirate

3. Witch

4. Spiderman

5. Superman

Image credit: photobucket.com