Photo credit: Sowang
Every night of the 31 October, Halloween (an abbreviation for “All Hallows' Even”) is celebrated in some Western countries, particularly in the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, and nowadays, Halloween also gains popularity in other regions such as China, Korea, Germany, Spain and Japan due to the influence of American pop culture, while in Australia and New Zealand, Halloween has gained little recognition. In Sweden, the holiday begins on the first Saturday of November. Trick-or-treating, ghost tours, costume parties, carving Jack-o'-lanterns, watching scary movies, visiting “haunted houses”, bonfires and reading horror stories are some of the common activities held during the time of Halloween.
Photo credit: FuT
Halloween means the eve of “All Hallows Day”, which is now commonly known as All Saints' Day. Its origin dated back to the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounce as “samain” in Old Irish or read as Oíche Shamhna in Irish) which is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture and hence it gains its name as “Celtic New Year”. The Halloween was regarded as an autumn festival for pre-Christian Celts, which means “End of Summer”. They believed that the dead revisited the mortal world, and due to this reason, large communal bonfires were lit to ward off evil spirits.
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In Scotland, people believe that the souls of the dead would wander around the Earth and are free to return to the mortal world until dawn. Halloween was perceived as being the time, during which the division between the world of the living and the other world was blurred. To ward off the evil spirits and phantoms that emerge at midnight, the bonfires and the lanterns called “samhnag” would be lit.
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Halloween was a religious day in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV to the old Christian feast of All Saints' Day from May 13 to November 1. It was told that the ancient Gaels perceived that the boundary between the alive and the deceased dissolved on 31 October, and thus the dead become dangerous for the living organism by causing problems like sickness or damaged crops.
Halloween's Pumpkin's Carving Event
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Pumpkin is one of the most prominent features of Halloween's celebration in America. Usually, the pumpkin is carved with a candle lit inside, which is commonly known as a jack-o'-lantern. Traditionally, these lanterns were initially carved into turnip or rutabaga shape.
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The Celts used the “head” of the vegetable to ward off the evil spirits as they believed that human “head” was the most powerful part of the body accommodating both knowledge and spirit.
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Legend had it said that jack-o'-lantern is linked to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, and hard-drinking old farmer. He tricked the devil to climb a tree and trapped it into a cross that he carved into the tree trunk. In revenge, the devil cursed him to forever wander around the Earth at night with the only light he had: a candle inside of a hollowed turnip.
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Many families particularly in North America that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face and they place it on their home's doorstep after dark. The tradition of carving pumpkins is now gained more popularity while celebrating Halloween as they are readily available, much larger and easy to carve than turnips. And thus, the traditionally used lanterns using turnips have now been replaced with the pumpkins. The practice of hollowing out pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns may have its origins in this practice.
Halloween's Imagery and Symbolization
Photos credit: Sowang, Las
Halloween imagery is merely an amalgamation of the Halloween season itself, which is portrayed in the works of American graphic artists and filmmakers. It involves the theme of death, mythical monster or magic, which takes on the dark and mysterious things surrounding Halloween. Traditionally, the characters include owls, witches, ghosts, black cats, goblins, zombies, mummies, skeletons, demons, pumpkin-men, vultures, crows, and ghouls.
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In 1990, many manufacturers have introduced more items to use for home decorations. The most popular yard decorations include spiders, foam tombstones and gargoyles, door and animatronic window decorations.
Photos credit: Tom
There are also prevalence elements of the autumn season, such as scarecrows and pumpkins, and very often, homes are decorated with these types of symbols.
Photos credit: disney.co.jp
The PC wallpaper for Halloween takes a theme of Walt Disney characters as released by Japanese company.
