Halloween or All Saints' Eve. What does Halloween mean? What does halloween mean

On the night of October 31 to November 1, many countries around the world celebrate Halloween, or Witch's Night - a holiday of evil spirits. This is one of the most popular mystical holidays in the world. collected interesting facts about this holiday.

Halloween is a Celtic pagan holiday.

The tribes living in what is now Ireland, Scotland and England divided the year into two seasons - winter and summer, and October 31 was the last day of the year. According to traditions, it was on the night of October 31 to November 1 that evil spirits came to the world of people. In order to protect themselves from them, it was customary to dress up in scary costumes.

When many Irish, Scots and English emigrated to America in the 19th century, the holiday migrated with them. It is one of the most popular holidays in the USA today.

According to legend, evil spirits do not harm people - they just wander between them, but there are also aggressive creatures that need to be appeased with gifts and sweets.

In contrast to this holiday, the Catholic Church began to celebrate the Day of All Saints on November 1, and on November 2 to honor the memory of all the dead.

The name Halloween was first mentioned in 1745. The word comes from the English Hallowe'en - an abbreviation of the expression All Hallow's Eve - the evening (eve) of All Saints' Day, which in turn stands for All Hallowed Souls Eve - literally: Evening of all holy souls.

Halloween in Ukraine

In Ukraine, the holiday began to be celebrated relatively recently. Young people celebrate it most actively, but there are many skeptics who consider the holiday to be a foreign tradition. In nightclubs, traditionally on the night of October 31 to November 1, Halloween parties are held, where a mandatory dress code applies. They also hold various competitions - for the best costume and for the most terrible makeup.

How Halloween is celebrated around the world

So, in Austria there is a festival “Pumpkin holiday”. On November 11, Austria celebrates Saint Martin's Day. People walk the streets in costumes and with lanterns in their hands. Some Austrians believe that if they leave bread, water and a lit lantern outside the door of their house, then dead souls will return to earth that night.

In Belgium, some villages celebrate Halloween, while others celebrate All Saints' Day more. On Halloween night, Belgians usually light candles in memory of a deceased relative.

Halloween was brought to Canada by Scottish and Irish immigrants who arrived on the mainland in the early 19th century. Canada actively celebrates Halloween every year on October 31st. Everything is traditional for this holiday, bright orange pumpkins, awesome costumes, treats, parties.

Halloween was brought to China by foreigners. In places where many emigrants live, the atmosphere of this pagan holiday is usually felt. Nevertheless, China also has its own holidays for the remembrance of the dead - the festival of hungry ghosts, for example.

In England, on Halloween, children carve scary faces not only in pumpkins but also in beets.

Since Halloween is not a traditional French holiday, there are occasional controversies surrounding October 31st celebrations. This holiday is a new trend for some French people. Nevertheless, young people are happy to arrange costume parties.

In Germany, Halloween became popular in the 1990s. People start preparing for the holiday from mid-October. On November 11, the Germans, like the Austrians, celebrate Saint Martin's Day. People arrange festivities, dressing up in costumes.

Halloween in Hong Kong has become increasingly popular in recent years. Hong Kong uses Halloween to commercialize its theme parks such as Disneyland and Ocean Park. Hong Kong residents also decorate their malls to reflect the eerie atmosphere.

The birthplace of Halloween is Ireland. It is a custom among Irish children to knock on neighbors' doors and run away before the owners open them. In addition, the Irish play a Halloween card game in which children choose a card and receive any prize for it. On this day, the Irish traditionally eat fruit cake - barnbrack. In barnbrack, when baking, it is customary to hide various surprises, and, depending on what gets inside the one who eats the cake, this will be the prediction for the future.

Halloween in Japan became popular when Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan began to popularize the celebration. In 2000, Halloween was celebrated at Tokyo Disneyland for the first time. Now the Japanese also decorate their homes and dress up in costumes.

Halloween is not celebrated in Korea. However, Korea has a harvest festival called Chuseok (Korea Thanksgiving). During Chuseok, Koreans visit places where their ancestors lived.

Halloween Attributes

People who celebrate Halloween decorate their homes with pumpkins, artificial cobwebs, candles and dry leaves. Halloween has orange and black colors. Housewives often prepare treats in the form of spiders, ghosts, “witch fingers”.

Halloween and kids

According to tradition, it is customary to distribute sweets to children who go from house to house and say the phrase “Trick or Treats” (Sweets or nasty things).

Pumpkin - Jack's O'Lantern

The tradition of carving a scary face from a pumpkin has existed for many centuries. So, according to the legend of the greedy blacksmith and drunkard Jack, who deceived the devil three times and bargained for himself long years of carefree life, as well as a promise not to claim his soul after death. When Jack died, his soul did not go to heaven. Jack is forced to wander the earth in anticipation of Judgment Day, lighting his way with a piece of coal that he put in an empty pumpkin head. Thus, according to the Celtic tradition, Jack's lamp was considered a lantern that helps souls find their way to purgatory.

Today it is believed that a gourd lantern will ward off evil spirits.

Photos from open sources

Position of the UOC-MP

Archpriest of the UOC-MP Georgy Kovalenko believes that modern Christians should think not about whether they should celebrate Halloween, but about how best to do it.

The clergyman proposes to rename this day the Day of All Non-Saints, so that "the form corresponds to the content."

According to him, the church does not approve of flirting with evil spirits, but believers themselves give Halloween a religious connotation.

Position of Catholics and Greek Catholics

In the Catholic Church of the Roman Rite, on November 1, All Saints' Day is celebrated, and the next day is the commemoration of all the dead believers, which originates along with the cult of the first martyrs. Christians celebrated "Birthday in Heaven", which was the day of Christian martyrdom.

The Eastern Church also honors All Saints' Day. This emphasizes the connection between holiness and the Holy Spirit. The dead, in the Eastern Church, are commemorated every Saturday. In the church calendar there are several Saturdays during the year when the ecumenical commemoration of all the dead takes place.

However, despite the fact that the majority of our fellow Ukrainians who are baptized believe that the celebration of Halloween is normal and harmless to society.

“It is painful to watch how our children from Christian families, when, through the mouth of their godparents in the sacrament of baptism, renounced Satan three times and promised to serve Christ the same number of times, they begin to venerate all evil spirits, and their own parents, with their own hands, with enthusiasm and perseverance, help to turn the faces of their children into faces. ghouls, witches, sorcerers and the like. They vied with each other to joke about what, in fact, it is necessary to sound the alarm ... How can we call ourselves Christians and do something that is contrary to Christianity? We can confidently conclude that Halloween is a holiday of evil that glorifies demons, promotes cruelty, idolatry and immorality,” the message of the diocese of the UGCC reads.

Halloween date in 2020 is October 31st, which means that the darkest holiday of the year with a pumpkin flavor will come very soon. A holiday of freedom, rampant evil spirits, faith in spirits. With this holiday we celebrate winter.

On the night of November 1, the door to the other world opens for several hours, and all kinds of evil spirits - vampires, werewolves, demons, evil spirits - flood the earth. It is important not only to propitiate them at a magnificent table, but also to scare them away with a hollowed-out pumpkin with a candle.

pagan halloween roots

Halloween is one of the oldest holidays in the world. It intertwined the Celtic tradition of honoring evil spirits and the Christian tradition of worshiping all saints. The history of Halloween goes back thousands of years, including the Celtic Samhain festival, the Roman Pomona Day, and the Christian All Saints Day.

Centuries ago, the lands of modern Britain and northern France were inhabited by Celtic tribes. They were pagans and as the supreme deity worshiped the god of the Sun. The Celts divided the year into two parts - winter and summer. In winter, the sun god was held captive by Samhain, the lord of the dead and the prince of darkness.

Samhain holiday. which was celebrated on November 1, is the time when winter begins. At this time, summer gives way to winter, day to night, life to death. All barriers between the material and supernatural worlds are removed and the gates between them open for one night. All unfulfilled hopes and plans of the dead returned to earth again, and their souls descended to their native hearth.

The souls of the dead could take on different guises, the evil ones moved into animals, and the most dangerous ones into cats. In order not to become the prey of the dead, people extinguished the fires in their houses and dressed up as scarily as possible, hoping to scare away the ghosts that crawled across the open border. The spirits were put out treats on the street so that they would be satisfied with this and not break into the house. On this night, predictions were made, animals were sacrificed, and then everyone took a tongue of sacred flame into their house to light the winter hearth.

Druids - Celtic priests - gathered in oak groves on the tops of hills, lit bonfires and made sacrifices to evil spirits to propitiate them. And in the mornings, the Druids gave people coals from fires, so that they kindled the hearths of their homes. The fire of the Druids warmed the houses during the long winter and protected the house from evil spirits.

At night, the girls guessed. They threw two chestnuts into the fire of the druids. If the fruits burn nearby, then the girl will live in harmony and harmony with the sweetheart, if they roll in different directions, their paths will go in different directions. A girl could see her future husband by sitting in front of a mirror at midnight with an apple in her hand.

The ancient Celts had another holiday associated with Halloween - the Moon of the Hunter, the last full moon before Samhain. It is believed that this is the time of the highest mental ascent, and at this time the line between the worlds becomes so thin that many entities pass through it.

Christian Halloween Traditions

In the first century AD, the Romans conquered the Celtic territories. During the 400 years that they spent on the lands of the Celts, not only the population, but also traditions mixed up: two Roman holidays were connected with Samhain. The first is Feralia, celebrated at the end of October, something like the day of remembrance of the dead, and the second is in honor of the goddess of fruits and trees, Pomona. Its symbol was an apple, and hence the modern Halloween tradition of playing with apples.

Christianity supplanted the Druids in Great Britain and became the dominant religion, and in the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV approved November 1 as All Hallows Day, which was supposed to glorify saints and martyrs. And the night before All Saints' Day became known as All Hallow's Eve. Over time, the name was reduced to Hallowe'en and eventually to Halloween. Since then, in the celebration of this day, pagan mysticism in an incomprehensible way coexists with Christian.

In the year 1000, the church declared November 2 the Day of All Souls, on which it was supposed to commemorate not the saints, but the simple dead. The commemoration was arranged in the likeness of Samhain - large bonfires, processions, dressing up in costumes of angels and devils. Now all three dates - All Saints' Eve (October 31), Saints' Day and All Souls' Day - are called Halloweenmas (cf. Christmas). By the end of the 19th century, the mystical slant of Halloween was almost done away with, turning it into a public holiday.

Modern Halloween Traditions

Today, from the ancient pagan holiday, there is a set of funny and fascinating traditions. On this night, it is customary to dress in costumes of evil spirits and arrange masquerades and processions. Well, you should not miss the rare chance to feel like a witch or a demon.

People go to bars where competitions are held for the most original and fancy costume. They arrange weddings with an appropriate bias: when the newlyweds are crowned by Dracula, who has risen from a coffin installed right in a gloomy decorated chapel.

In New York, up to two million people gather for the Halloween parade, this parade is usually covered by the largest television channels and broadcast live. Baltimore hosts the Pumpkin Throw, a competition for physics students to find the best invention to keep a pumpkin from breaking apart when it falls from the tenth floor.

An integral symbol of Halloween is a pumpkin head. The inside is removed from the pumpkin, the face is cut out and a candle is inserted inside. The pumpkin symbolizes at the same time the end of the harvest, the evil spirit and the fire that scares it away. So strangely concentrated ancient beliefs in one subject.

On this night, children knock on houses shouting “Treat or trick!” - "Treat or be sorry!". If you do not make a sacrifice, these little evil demons can play cruel tricks on you - for example, smear the door handles with soot.

The imminent approach of Halloween is always signaled by various attributes in the form of pumpkins that appear in shop windows and on store shelves. For hundreds of years, on October 31, Jack-o-lanterns has been shining in every window, scaring away evil spirits. Irish legend tells about the origin of this Halloween symbol.

Once, on the eve of All Saints' Day, the devil himself coveted a drunken blacksmith, nicknamed Stingy Jack, who was sitting in a bar. The blacksmith agreed to give him his soul, but only in exchange for a mug of ale. To buy a drink, the devil had to turn into a coin. Sly Jack put the sixpence in his pocket where he had the silver cross. The devil, tortured by the cross, begged for mercy, and Jack released him, but first he bargained for himself ten years of a quiet life.

When the devil reappeared ten years later, the Irishman hinted at the apple in his last request. When the devil stood on his shoulders to reach the apple branch, Jack quickly scrawled a cross on the bark of the tree. The devil hung in the air and as a result promised that he would not take his soul to himself at all. Finally Jack died. God, of course, refused to put the sinful drunkard in paradise. The devil met Jack on the threshold of the underworld. "I can't take your soul," he said. "Where am I to go?" Jack asked. “Where you came from,” the devil replied. There was total darkness around... Jack asked for fire. And the devil, pulling out a smoldering coal from a hellish fire, gave it to Jack and sent him to wander around the world. The Irishman had a turnip with him. Having cut out the middle, he inserted an infernal ember there - so that it would not blow out with the wind! - and went on his eternal journey. Jack-lantern still roams the earth in anticipation of the Last Judgment and serves as a symbol of the damned soul.

In Ireland and Scotland, terrible faces, into which candles were then inserted, were cut out of turnips and potatoes, in England - from beets. With immigrants, the tradition migrated to America. It turned out that a pumpkin native to the continent is ideal for the role of Jack-o-lantern.

Halloween Mystery

It is a pity that behind these entertainments the ancient meaning of Halloween is forgotten. This holiday intrigues with mystery, with its mythical significance. Halloween is an attempt to understand the connection between our world and the other world. It is a gateway from one world to another. Between two worlds, they belong to both of them - and neither of them. It is also the gateway to winter.

We still tend to perceive winter with dislike and disgust. Everything that lives seems to die. However, the arrival of death is, by definition, the arrival of life. The white desert where Samhain lives is extraordinarily beautiful. She is freed from everything superfluous, superficial. So, it's time to throw off the burden of worries and vanities that have accumulated over the summer and have lost their meaning, following the example of trees that are freed from leaves that have outlived their time. After all, if the trees do not shed them, the dead leaves will not give them the opportunity to come to life again in the spring.

On this night, Samhain opens the gates to the past and the future. Two elements become available in the present. This is the time when a person is not limited by the cell of his time and can realize his place in the web of eternity. However, the transition to another space or time is usually painful. The gate is well guarded. Witches and demons - the heroes of Halloween - are the shadows of the guardians of the gates. From our side of existence, they seem to be frightening embodiments of evil. But if the gate is passed, who will we see when we look back? ..

All about Halloween. How to have Halloween at home: ideas for home contests.

halloween in our country began to celebrate quite recently. Until a certain time, we generally treated it as something incomprehensible and alien. But recently this holiday has become very popular and both children and adults began to celebrate it on a grand scale.

We usually have a Halloween party in some nightclub. The venue is appropriately decorated and inhabited throughout the night until morning.

What is Halloween, what kind of holiday, when is it celebrated?

Halloween 2016: history, facts

Ireland is considered the birthplace of Halloween. Unlike us, people who lived in this territory in the pre-Christian era did not divide the year into four seasons, but only into two. For them, there was only summer and winter. Moreover, they believed that only good spirits and the souls of their close relatives descend to earth in summer. But they waited for the arrival of winter with fear, because they believed that along with the cold, everything bad descends to the earth.

Since they understood that they would have to live with spirits from the other world for the next six months, they tried to appease everything supernatural and dark. On the night of October 31 to November 1 they lit candles, lanterns, and thus showed the spirits the way to the world of the living. Ancient people believed that if they could appease evil, then the winter would not be very cold, with little snow and full.

And so that the spirits from the other world would take them for their own, they dressed in the skins of dead animals, painted their faces as scary as possible and sitting by the fire, read spells and told scary stories. With the advent of Christianity, the holiday itself has changed a bit. The Pope forbade sacrificing animals, dressing up and casting magic spells. Anyone who continued to do this was called idolaters and publicly punished.

Halloween Home Decor

But people who are used to celebrating Halloween on the last day of October still couldn’t completely give up their habits, so they continued to decorate their house with pumpkins, autumn apples and beautiful lanterns. In such a slightly modified form, the holiday has survived to our time.

Although we are not as superstitious as the ancient Celts, we still strive to decorate our house with a terrible pumpkin and distribute as many sweets as possible to children this evening. Pumpkin for us is the same as for the Celt his terrible suit of animal skins. The main task of this orange vegetable with an evil muzzle is to scare away evil spirits from the residents of the house where it stands.

Halloween Traditions

In ancient times, animal sacrifice was considered the most important moment of the holiday. Thus, the Celts tried to pay off otherworldly creatures. They believed that if they take them to the forest and kill the best sheep or goat there, then the evil spirits will have mercy on them and will not send them trouble.

In addition, they also carried apples, pears, pumpkins, as well as prepared food to the forest. All this was a guarantee that they would be able to safely survive the cold season. Modern man is very far from all this, so his holiday traditions are completely different. For us, the main symbol of Halloween is a pumpkin with a candle inside. This holiday decor on the last day of October can be seen in almost every home.

Where did people get such a strong love for this orange vegetable? There is an ancient legend that tells about a simple guy Jack, who managed to deceive the devil and persuaded him to give up his soul after death. In addition, he begged him for a non-extinguishing coal, inserted it into a pumpkin and made a lantern out of it, showing the way to travelers.

In many countries, it is customary to ask for candy late in the evening.

It is also believed that in addition to the pumpkin, the house should be decorated with candles and funny faces-lamps. All this will show the spirits that we are not afraid of them and are fully prepared for the winter. Another important tradition is the asking for sweets. Kids do it these days. To do this, they dress up in funny costumes of witches, various monsters and evil creatures and, accompanied by adults, go from house to house and ask for sweets.

But if for us this is just a fun pastime and another reason to get together with the whole family, then in ancient times people took this tradition more seriously. As a rule, only the most needy and poor people went to collect sweets on the evening of All Saints. Sweets were a price for them, for which they pledged to pray throughout the cold winter for the salvation of the souls of dead people.

Contests for children on Halloween

Sweet Tooth Contest

Accurate shooter

Take one large pumpkin, carefully cut a funny face on it and carefully clean out the seeds from its inside.
Make the upper hole a little larger than usual, and in order to make its edges clearly visible even from afar, decorate them with a red satin ribbon (it can be fixed with ordinary bamboo sticks or pins).
Place the pumpkin about 2-3 meters away from the children and invite them to take turns tossing a coin or a small ball into it.
Whoever manages to throw, he receives a candy as a gift.

Scary bowling

For this game you will need 2-3 small pumpkins and 5-7 liter plastic bottles. To make them as stable as possible, fill them with rice, peas or ordinary sand.

If you want the bottles to look like holiday skittles as much as possible, then cover them with orange corrugated paper and paint with cobwebs, scary faces and pumpkins.

Put the pumpkins in a row and invite the guys to knock them down with the help of decorated bottles. Whoever knocks down the pumpkin more times will be considered the winner.

halloween light

Have the children sit in a circle and give one of them a flashlight. Ask the guys to the ominous music with the lights off, to pass the flashlight on to each other as quickly as possible.

It must be transmitted as long as the music is playing. As soon as she falls silent, the child in whose hands the flashlight remains is knocked out of the game. The game continues until there is only one winner left.

Make sure all children are involved in the games.

monster on the phone

This entertainment is somewhat reminiscent of the game with a damaged phone, familiar to us from childhood. But in this case, the scenery will play the main role.

Turn off the light in the room, light a few candles, seat the children in a row. Invite them to whisper to each other a phrase invented by the facilitator. Just do not use ordinary words for the game.

If you want the guys to really get into the spirit of the holiday, then use thematic words for the competition, for example, life or sweets, fresh meat, I'll eat you.

ghost hunting

First, choose the one who will play the role of the hunter. This child should be blindfolded and put in the center of the room. Everyone else will play the role of ghosts.

They must silently run around the hunter and not let themselves be caught. A blindfolded hunter must catch a ghost and, by the strange sounds it makes, guess who is standing in front of him.

If he succeeds, then the child knocks out of the game. If he failed to do this, the ghost returns back to the cheerful company. If there are complainers, then during the game you can change the hunter.

Know your destiny

Take ordinary white sheets of paper and write “yes”, “no” and “maybe” on them with lemon juice.

Let the guys ask you questions that interest them or just make wishes, and then randomly draw out pre-prepared leaves.

As soon as the child pulls out his leaf, hold it over a lit candle or table lamp. In just a few minutes, the answer will appear on it, and the children will be delighted.

Halloween Contests for Adults

Fun Halloween Contests for Adults

Mummy

Divide your guests into pairs, give them a few rolls of toilet paper, and ask your partner to make an Egyptian mummy.
If you want to complicate the task, then turn off the lights and light a few candles in the room.
The victory will be for the team that will cope with the task faster than the others and will do it in the most qualitative way (only the eyes of the mummy should remain visible).

Pin the monster's tail

For this competition you will need special decorations. So, take a large piece of plywood or thick cardboard and fix it to the wall.

Next, make a mockup of a monster or witch and attach it to a piece of cardboard. Separately make the tail. Blindfold the participant, spin him, ask him to attach the tail to the monster for a while.

If a person is very much disoriented in space, you can help him with words to move in the right direction.

Halloween Contest: Bloody Mary

Who will drink blood faster?

To conduct this relay race, you can use ordinary tomato juice or prepare a bloody Mary.

So, pour the juice into glasses, insert tubes into it and invite guests to drink it at speed.

The one who completes the task the fastest receives a small gift, for example, an aroma candle.

Horrible makeup

Prepare in advance theatrical makeup and makeup brushes of different thicknesses. Break the guests into teams and ask them to paint each other's faces.

Be sure to give them a list of monsters in which they must reincarnate. I want to say right away that this competition is most suitable for men.

They, unlike women, do not need to wash off their old makeup, and since they do not have even the minimum skills in this matter, their monsters will turn out to be quite funny.

Guess for adults

Take a few opaque jugs and fill them with products that are not very pleasant to the touch.

You can, for example, put peeled grapes, crushed tomatoes, semolina with lumps or chilled jelly in them.

Then blindfold the participant and ask him to feel what he is touching with his hands.

During the game, you can give a person not quite the right tips and loud sounds to show that he is touching something very nasty.

Terrible message

Divide the guests into teams, give them newspapers, magazines, scissors, white sheets of paper and glue. The essence of the game is to compose a frightening letter to rivals.

In order to create it, your guest will need to cut out letters, words or individual phrases from newspapers and magazines and put them into sentences.

The team whose letter will have a large text will be considered the winner. This competition can be held both with the lights on and by candlelight.

The second option will be more interesting because it will be more difficult for guests to carefully and correctly glue their message on a piece of paper.

Scary stories on Halloween night

Scary Halloween Stories

Story #1: Once upon a time there was one happy family. Everything was fine with them, only the youngest daughter was not very obedient. She could leave the house without saying anything or refuse to help her parents when they needed her help, but most of all it did not like the neighbor's boy. On the day before Halloween, when he was finishing decorating his yard with lanterns and pumpkins, she came and destroyed everything. Parents had to apologize for it for a long time and help the neighbors to restore everything. With the population of the night, everyone safely went to bed, and when they woke up in the morning, they saw that a red spot appeared on the girl’s cheek. On the festive night itself, it increased even more, and after a while it turned into a terrifying red mask. Parents hastily took their daughter to the hospital, but the doctors only shrugged. Still much tormented, the girl died. Now, every Halloween, he walks around the cemetery and asks for forgiveness from the boy whom he offended for no reason.

Story #2: For some reason, a boy named Dima was very afraid of his neighbor. When he told his mother that he did not like him, she simply smiled, asked not to exaggerate. Once, just before Halloween, the parents had to go somewhere, and they asked a neighbor to look after Dima and his sister. In the evening, when the parents were driving, a neighbor came and settled down in a businesslike manner in the kitchen, began to drink tea and looked at them in a strange way. When it was time to go to bed, he invited the children to tell a bedtime story, and they gladly agreed. They calmly climbed into the bedroom, lay down in their beds and the neighbor began his story. With a cheerful, cheerful voice, he began to read to the children a fairy tale about witches, monsters, maniacs and ghosts. Dima really did not like the story and he asked the neighbor to stop, but he did not stop and kept telling strange things. When the parents returned home, their children were asleep!

Where is Halloween celebrated and celebrated, in which country?

Halloween in other countries

As you probably understood, Halloween in our country is unbridled fun, dancing, games and entertainment. Unlike the Irish, we do not go to the cemetery on this day and do not remember our dead relatives. Also fun and energetically Halloween is celebrated in other countries.

For example, in USA and Canada just like ours, they like to arrange theme parties with contests and fortune-telling. On Halloween, a short working day is usually announced so that people can get home early and prepare for the holiday. But, perhaps, the most important tradition for them is begging for sweets.

Halloween parade in France

Parents dress their children in the craziest outfits and walk around the neighborhood with them until late at night. France celebrates Halloween with a grand parade of goblins, witches and ghosts. Cafes and bars do not close on this night and serve witch dishes to guests.

In Germany It is customary to visit Frankenstein Castle on the night of All Saints. Locals believe that on this night he comes and looks at people from the roof of his dwelling. In China Halloween is considered a day of honoring the ancestors.

On this day, sacred boats are made in all Buddhist temples. Toward evening, people gather in temples and burn them all together. It is believed that the smoke that comes from them helps the souls of the dead to rise to heaven.

Video: Halloween Story

Halloween (the night before All Saints' Day) in Russia gained its fame thanks to Hollywood. Moreover, many still do not understand what Halloween is, why on this day everyone scares each other, children run around the houses in costumes of devils and demand candy for it.

The History of Halloween: From America to Russia

At first, it was fashionable to celebrate Halloween in Russia. Again, it was very cool to carve a scary mug out of a pumpkin, stuff a candle into it and put the whole diabolical structure at the head of the table.

Then this newfangled whim with the feast of all saints got tired. It seems to be, at first glance - utter nonsense, but if you look, the roots of Halloween do not grow from Hollywood, but from the Old World.

About Halloween from the beginning

In reality, we are dealing with one of the most ancient holidays known to mankind, this is exactly what Halloween is.
Even during the pre-Christian era, the tribes inhabiting the territories of France, Ireland and England loved to scare each other until they turned gray. Then people did not divide the year into quarters, months, weeks and days. There were summer and winter. Just on October 31, the seasons began to change and the world plunged into winter.

The ancients believed that on the night of November 1, a portal to the afterlife opens on Earth, and the border between the two worlds was called Samhain.

In order not to fall into the underworld, the unfortunate Celts had to disguise themselves as evil spirits, so that the inhabitants of the world of the dead would not take them to their permanent residence. The more terrible the person's outfit, the less likely it is that he will end up in the world of darkness. Some lucky ones didn’t even need to make up at all. In general, the goal of the ancients was complex, but noble - to scare the evil spirits, moreover, more than she herself scares them.

Halloween traditions around the world

To appease the representatives of the dark world, people put up treats near the houses. From century to century, the tradition of meeting the Halloween holiday (Halloween) did not change, but once the Celtic tribes fell under the yoke of the Romans and traditions, the customs of the ancient tribes underwent cultural changes.

The ancient inhabitants of Britain and Ireland received Christianity, so it was strictly forbidden to follow pagan traditions. Up to the death penalty. The Romans tried to eradicate, as they thought, the barbaric customs of the tribes, but the Celts gradually passed on the traditions from generation to generation.

In the 9th century, Pope Gregory III officially moved the celebration of Halloween (All Saints Night) to November 1, so everyone who secretly followed the pagan tradition of Samhain got a completely legal opportunity to celebrate their favorite holiday again.
The night that came on the eve of All Saints Day sounds in English as All Hallows Night, or the Night of All Saints, and in short, Halloween. Paradoxically, after the transfer of All Saints Day to November 1, the Catholic Church, which fought against pagan holidays, restored the ancient holiday of Samhain without knowing it.

Therefore, what is called the Day of All Saints, in fact, is nothing more than a meeting of the world of the dead and the living. So Happy Halloween - the day of witches, sorcerers, ghouls and ghouls. And don't forget to come to the sabbath.

When is Halloween 2019 celebrated in Russia?

October 31 is the date when Halloween is celebrated not only in Russia, but throughout the world. Congratulations on this unique and perhaps the “most terrible” holiday!