Author: Qingqing Jiang
Professor: Brenda Times
Class: NV 504
Date: October 28th
What is Halloween
Halloween is a anniversary festival on October 31st in western countries which usually popular among Saxon descent of the United States, the British Isles Australia, Canada, New Zealand and some other western counties.
Actually, Halloween is often closely linked to paranormal things. Traditional Europe thought is that Halloween is the ghosts most close to human beings’ world. It is also similar to Tomb- Sweeping Day in China, Hyakki Yagy in Japan. Anoka, Minnesota, United States is called “the world capital of Halloween”, every year it will organize a large parade to celebrate the traditional festival.
Like Christmas and Easter, Halloween is from Catholicism to other religious festival’s absorption and transformation. Halloween originated in the British Celtics traditional festival, in the last day of October, people believed it was the end of the summer, the beginning of the winter, that day is a very important symbol of the year, so it is also one of the most important festival, known as “the day of the dead” or “ghost festival”. On that night, all sorts of evil spirits, dead people’s soul will leave the body, they will walk on street, this is why people think is very dangerous at that night. In order to scare away the evil spirits, the Celtics would wear a mask.
On the later 18th and early 19th century, Halloween was celebrated in North American. The custom of Halloween is mainly popular in the former British colony of the British Isles and British America, which is the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on. Initially the ghost festival was brought by the immigrants from Ireland and Scotland in 19th century, while the rest of the developed countries in the 20th century began to celebrate the holy night, because of the American pop culture’s influence.
The theme of the Halloween is ghosts, scary and something is associated with death, or magic. Black and orange is the traditional color for Halloween. But modern of Halloween products is also extensive use of purple, green and red. Autumn elements such as pumpkin and the scarecrow, also become the symbol of Halloween. Jack- O’Lantern is the most visible symbol of Halloween. In the UK and Ireland, at first, local people hollowed turnips to put candles in it. However, when immigrant moved to Untied States, they adopted pumpkin quickly, because pumpkin is easy to carve. Now many families carved scary faces on pumpkin, and put them on the gate of the