Nowadays
most people celebrate Halloween, but they do not know where it actually comes
from or what the actual meaning is. The festival originates from a Celtic
festival called "Samhain", which means „summers end“. People believe that in the night before
Samhain, 31st of October, the dead are returning as ghosts.. To keep roaming
spirits away people leave food and wine on their doorsteps. The Christian
church changed Samhain to All Hallowe´s Eve. Later it was shortened to
Halloween, as it´s name remains until today. Personally I didn´t know much
about the spooky festival of the year and there is a lot of new information
that really surprised me. I knew Halloween is a very famous festivity,
especially in the United States. A sister of mine lives in Ohio, and she told
me that Halloween today is more about costumes and traditions like trick or
treating than the literal meaning. I know that costumes have a huge impact and
an important role in times of modern Halloween. More than 120 Americans dress
up in costumes, for example as witches, pirates and vampires. All in all it means
that Halloween is a huge business for companies. People spend 2.5 Billion
Dollars for costumes every year and 6 Billion Dollars for candy, which is quite
much. One thing I found out is how the traditions changed from the past to the
present. In the mid 19th century the Irish came across the Atlantic and through
that a lot of changes happened. Bonfires shrank to lanterns and disguising
became to costumes. One important part about Halloween is the healthy pumpkin,
where one of them contains more than 500 seeds and which peers out from
doorsteps in many parts of the world in October. Irish immigrants brought the
tradition to America and it should reflect the story of “jack-o´-lanterns”,
which I also just figured out and found it very helpful and interesting for the
historical meaning and traditions of Halloween. Another surprising information
is, that a big part of the English society stopped celebrating Halloween when
Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation began to spread. Although Halloween
sounds very interesting I never celebrated it before, but now I understand more
about the famous day of death and maybe I will also dress up at October 31st or
just join the Halloween party, which is organized by the ITAT.
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