The Halloween festival includes the lighting of bonfires, attending costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, visiting haunted house attraction, playing pranks, trick-or-treat, apple bobbing, etc. The costume is the main attraction in these celebrations as all the people including the children are dressed up as vampires, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. This was due to another belief that if they appeared scary than they may scare away all the evil roaming around them. All the activities performed on the Halloween have their own stories of how it was started or why was it performed.
The word ‘Halloween’ means ‘hallowed evening’ or ‘holy evening’. It’s a festival which is mostly celebrated by Western Christians at the number of countries on 31st of October. It is also called as All Hallow Eve or All Saints Eve. The tradition of Halloween was started in the ancient period as the Celtic festival of the dead which was influenced by the Celtic harvest festival ‘Samhain’. The ‘Samhain’ was a festival which indicates the beginning of the winter and the ancient pagans start to prepare by having stock of the things which would be necessary to survive in winter. It was their belief that the last day of October, is the day when the spirits or ghost of the dead are active and could easily enter our world for creating havoc such as sickness, damaged crops etc.
The ‘trick-or-treat’ was one of another ritual which would perform by the children’s in which they visit the neighbors house to ask for ‘trick-or-treat’. But as many of them started taking advantage of this ritual to hurt whoever they want, due to which it was abolished later. However, a popular substitute for ‘trick-or-treat’ was ‘trunk-or-treating’ a solution for the entire problem raised in ‘trick-or-treat’. Children enjoy a more ‘trunk-or-treating’ than the ‘trick-or-treat’ as in these children was offered treats from the trunk of a car which would have parked in a church or school’s parking lot.
Halloween parties today are celebrated with very different types of costumes like a Disney princess, Zombies, Ninja, Star Wars, Batman, Adult Minion, Popeye, Peter Pan, Yoda, sky-walker, any popular superhero or fictional character among other scary costumes. The decorations today includes Fog Machines, Black lights, Strobes, Pumpkin lights and many other lighting effects that can create the spooky atmosphere. Food and treats in the Halloween parties include, Scary sweets and treats like ghost cupcakes, Owl-Ween treats, Mummy Oreo Pops , witch broomstick lollipops and plenty of other items, which boost the festival mood among people. The caricatures and illustrations for the people with Halloween costume and party scenes are very popular, If anyone could not get a chance to have a favorite costume for some reason, the online caricaturists can fulfill this dream by making caricatures in such costumes, they only need your photo and the photo of the costumes.
