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1、Halloween is an annual holiday observed on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints Day, but is today largely a secular celebration.Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving ja
2、ck-o-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and watching horror films.HistoryHistorian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while some folklorists have detected its
3、origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in).1 The name is derived from Old Irish and means roug
4、hly summers end.1 A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf (pronounced Klan Gi av).The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the lighter half of the year and beginning of the darker half, and is sometimes2 regarded as the Celtic New Year.3The ancient Celts b
5、elieved that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The familys ancestors were honoured and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led
6、 to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces.45 Samhain was also a time to take stock of food supplies and slaughter
7、 livestock for winter stores. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. All other fires were doused and each home lit their hearth from the bonfire. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.6 Sometimes two bonfires would be built side-by-side, and people and their livestoc
8、k would walk between them as a cleansing ritual.Another common practice was divination, which often involved the use of food and drink.The name Halloween and many of its present-day traditions derive from the Old English era.Origin of nameThe word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and
9、represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even (evening), that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Up through the early 20th century, the spelling Halloween was frequently used, eliding the v and shortening the word. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hlen
10、a mssed, the feast of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556.10Games and other activitiesThere are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. One common game is dunking or apple bobbing, in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the par
11、ticipants must use their teeth to remove an apple from the basin.36 A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drop the fork into an apple.37 Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten
12、without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably leads to a very sticky face.Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of divination. A traditional Scottish form of divining ones future spouse is to carve an apple in one long strip, then toss the
13、 peel over ones shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouses name.38 Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if the
14、y were destined to die before marriage, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards39 from the late 19th century and early 20th century.The telling of ghost stories and viewing of horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of telev
15、ision series and Halloween-themed specials (with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before the holiday, while new horror films are often released theatrically before the holiday to take advantage of the atmosphere.SymbolsDevelopment of artifacts and symbols associated w
16、ith Halloween formed over time encompassing customs of medieval holy days as well as contemporary cultures. The souling practice of commemorating the souls in purgatory with candle lanterns carved from turnips, became adapted into the making of jack-o-lanterns.11 In traditional Celtic Halloween festivals, large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and placed in windows to ward off evil spirits.5 The carving of pumpki
