Spooky Halloween: A Spooky Holiday On 31th October.

Halloween (or Hallowe’en) is an annual holiday observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of Allhallowtide. This Spooky Halloween begins the observance of Allhallowtide, a time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead and honoring saints and martyrs.

The Origin Of A Frightening Celebration Day.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). This festival marked the end of October and the beginning of November. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago and mostly in Ireland, the UK, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marks the end of summer and the beginning of winter, a time of year that is often associated with human death. The Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On this night they celebrated Samhain when it was believed that ghosts returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

In honor of the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to Celtic deities. The Celts wore costumes during celebrations and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes by reading their palms.

After the celebration concluded, they relit their hearth fires, which had been extinguished earlier in the evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered most of the Celtic territory, and in the course of four hundred years that they ruled over this territory, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

Feralia, an official Roman holiday honoring the dead, was held on October 30; it was followed by a day of celebration in honor of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which may explain why bobbing for apples is a popular Halloween tradition today.

A Day Related To All Saints.

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome as a place of worship for Christians who had been martyred, and that day is now celebrated as All Martyrs’ Day in the Western church. In 787, Pope Gregory III expanded All Martyrs’ Day to include all saints and martyrs—and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

The influence of Christianity spread into Celtic lands by the ninth century, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. Legend holds that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. The All-Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-Hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion—which had been called by this name since at least the fifth century—began to be called All-Hallows Eve and eventually Halloween.

Spooky Halloween Comes To America.

Halloween celebrations were extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems present there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. In the early 17th century, for example, “play parties” were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories about ghosts and tell each other’s fortunes; they also danced and sang.

Halloween celebrations in colonial America featured the telling of ghost stories, mischief-making, and other activities. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. Many of those immigrants were Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, who helped to popularize Halloween nationally.

Trick-or-treating: A Traditional Activity.

The custom of trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money. The word “trick” implies a threat to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is said to have roots in the medieval practice of mumming, which is closely related to souling.

John Pymm wrote that “many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church.” These feast days included All Hallows’ Eve, Christmas, and Twelfth Night. Mumming practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe involved masked persons in fancy dress who paraded through towns and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence.

In England, from the medieval period until the 1930s, people practiced a custom called souling on Halloween, in which groups of people went from parish to parish begging for soul cakes—cakes made of bread and sugar that were thought to have supernatural powers. In the Philippines, souling is called Pangangaluluwa and is practiced among rural children on All Hallow’s Eve. Children wear white clothes to represent souls and visit houses where they sing in return for prayers and sweets.

In Scotland and Ireland, children dressed up in costume to go door-to-door for food or money is a traditional Halloween custom. In 1895, masqueraders carrying lanterns made out of scooped-out turnips visited homes and were rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money. Beginning in the early 2000s, the most popular phrase for kids to shout was “Help the Halloween Party”. The practice of guising at Halloween in North America was first recorded in 1911 when a newspaper reported children going “guising” around the neighborhood.

American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US; The Book of Hallowe’en (1919). Kelley explores American customs that were brought over from Europe by colonizing Europeans; “Americans have fostered them and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries.”

The first known reference to “trick or treat” in North America occurs in 1911, and another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915. The earliest known use in print of the term “trick or treat” appears in 1927, in the Blackie Herald of Alberta, Canada.

Between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s, thousands of Halloween postcards were produced in North America. Most show children holding candy but not trick-or-treating; trick-or-treating does not appear to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the first US appearances of the term occurring in 1934 and 1939.

Trunk-or-treating is a popular variant of trick-or-treating in which “children are offered treats from the trunks of cars parked in a church parking lot”, or sometimes, a school parking lot. In a trunk-or-treat event, the trunk (boot) of each automobile is decorated with a certain theme: for example, children’s literature, movies, scripture, and job roles. Trunk-or-treating has grown in popularity due to its perception as being safer than going door to door and because it “solves the rural conundrum in which homes [are] built a half-mile apart”.

Why Did Pumpkin Become A Fruit That Is Related To Halloween Holiday?

In the 1800s, many Irish and English immigrants left their native countries to live in America. They brought with them their Halloween traditions, but instead of carving turnips, they made their Halloween lanterns out of pumpkins. There are a lot of pumpkins in America in the autumn. They are soft and much easier to carve than hard old turnips. You can also make delicious pies and soups from pumpkins.

Halloween costumes and naughtiness eventually turned into American trick-or-treating. Halloween pumpkins and trick-or-treating first became popular in England about 20 or 30 years ago, although many people think these are American creations. In fact, they have just been reintroduced—and they are modern versions of old traditions that go back hundreds of years.

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How About Halloween Movies?

Halloween movies with horror elements have a long history of being box office successes. Here are some horror-themed films that you must watch during the upcoming Halloween holiday:

Halloween Franchise.

Halloween is an American slasher media franchise that consists of twelve films, as well as novels and comic books. The films primarily focus on Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his sister, Judith Myers. Fifteen years later, he escapes to stalk and kill the people of Haddonfield, Illinois. Michael’s killings occur on Halloween night, during which all the films take place.

The original Halloween (1978) was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill and directed by Carpenter. The film features an atmosphere inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974).

Eleven films have been released since 1978 original was released, with Michael Myers being the antagonist in all of them except for Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1988), a story with no direct connection to any other film in the series. In 2007, writer-director Rob Zombie created a remake of the 1978 film. A sequel to the 2007 film was released two years later and then another sequel in 2018; a direct sequel to the original film – Halloween Kills – was released in 2021 and a final one – Halloween Ends – in 2022.

The franchise has a complex history and multilayered continuity, making it confusing for new viewers. Forbes called it the Choose Your Own Adventure of horror movie franchises. It grossed over $773 million at the box office worldwide. The film series is ranked first at the United States box office—in adjusted 2018 dollars—when compared to other American horror film franchises. The original film received critical acclaim, while its 2018 sequel received mostly positive reviews from critics.

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Friday The 13^th Franchise.

Friday the 13th is an American horror franchise consisting of twelve slasher films, a television series, novels, comic books, video games, and tie‑in merchandise. The franchise mainly focuses on the fictional character Jason Voorhees, who was thought to have drowned as a boy at Camp Crystal Lake due to the negligence of the camp staff. Decades later, the lake is rumored to be “cursed” and is the setting for a series of mass murders. Jason is featured in all the films as either the killer or the motivation for the killings.

The original film created to cash in on the success of Halloween (1978) was written by Victor Miller and produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham. The films have grossed over $468 million at the box office worldwide (2018).

After Paramount released Jason Lives, producer Frank Mancuso, Jr., developed the television show Friday the 13th: The Series. This series was not connected to the franchise by any character or setting; it was based on the idea of “bad luck and curses”, which the film series symbolized. While the franchise was owned by Paramount, four films were adapted into novels: Friday the 13th Part III by two separate authors; and Freddy vs. Jason and Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare by various comic book writers. When New Line Cinema took over ownership of the franchise, Cunningham returned as a producer to oversee two additional films that added Jason to other horror franchises such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream.

Although critics did not enjoy the films, Friday the 13th is considered one of the most successful media franchises in America. The franchise’s popularity has generated a fanbase who have created their own Friday the 13th films, fashioned replica Jason Voorhees costumes, and tattooed their bodies with Friday the 13th artwork. The hockey mask worn by actor Kane Hodder in the series has become one of the most recognizable images in horror and popular culture.

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The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick (in his feature directorial debut) and produced and conceived by Tim Burton, is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of “Halloween Town” who stumbles upon “Christmas Town” and becomes obsessed with celebrating the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and scored and provided the singing voice for Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Burton began to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or a half-hour television special to no avail. Over time, his thoughts returned to the project, and he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios in 1990. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco; Touchstone Pictures initially released the film through its distribution company because they believed that it would be “too dark and scary for kids”.

The film was critically praised by both audiences and critics. It earned praise for its animation (particularly the innovation of the stop-motion art form), characters, songs, and score. It has grossed $91.5 million worldwide since its initial release and garnered a cult following. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects—a first for an animated film. The film was reissued by Walt Disney Pictures in 2006 and was re-released annually in Disney Digital 3-D from 2006 until 2010.

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Hocus Pocus (1993).

Hocus Pocus is a 1993 American fantasy comedy horror film written and directed by Kenny Ortega. The film follows a villainous comedic trio of witches (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy) who are inadvertently resurrected by a virgin teenage boy (Omri Katz) in Salem, Massachusetts on Halloween night.

Hocus Pocus was released in the United States on July 16, 1993. It received mixed reviews from critics. The film did not do well at the box office, possibly costing Disney around $16.5 million during its theatrical run. However, it has since become a cult classic due to its yearly airings on Disney Channel and Freeform (formerly ABC Family) all throughout October annually. The annual celebration of Halloween has helped make Hocus Pocus a popular choice for viewing every Halloween season.

A sequel, written by Jen D’Angelo, directed by Anne Fletcher, and set for release on September 30, 2022, is in production as a Disney+ original film.

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