Festival of Fun and Joy

This festival, traditionally, trick-or-treating is on October 31st irrespective of the day of the week. The date 31st carries importance. This festivity is also known as All Saints' Day. But many communities choose to celebrate Halloween festival on other days and or in other ways too. In fact it all began as harvest and New Year celebration of the Druids, pre-Christians from the Great Britain and Ireland. It was called Samhain. We don't know very much about how it was celebrated then, because the Christians did their very best to erase as much of these ancient traditions as they verily could do. Ultimately what was left over was nothing but traditional activities which was accepted by the whole of United States of America as their own festivities season and transformed as two new Christian holidays. But now only Roman Catholics and very closely Christian sects, of little denominations have accepted it.

Many fundamentalist Christian don't celebrate it all anymore, and have a harvest festival, instead, just because they think the pre-Christian, pagan origin of the holiday makes it demonic. It was believed that the spirits of the dead came and walked the earth at Halloween, and that they were often malevolent. When the Christians came, they kept the day, (religious holidays start in the evening at sunset and ends the following day evening; i.e. at sunset time itself.) Since most of the people are more secular and simply celebrate on the day of holidays, except for Halloween which is almost exclusively celebrated on the first evening, but for the practicing Catholics but called it All Saints' Day, when we remember all of the saints who have done God's will throughout the ages. The following day became All Souls' Day. On this day virtually whole of USA, UK and many parts of Europe remember and pray for all who have died earlier and pray for the peace for the departed souls. The old English way of saying All Saints was All Hallows and evening was called e'en; short form of evening. So the name HALLOWEEN came into existence.

After Christianity people continued with many traditions from the old religion, given significance by the newer and more positive holiday. Say about 35-40 years back this event used to be participated entirely by children but now Halloween is not the exclusive domain of children alone but of adults as well.

Now all the children dress in scary costumes with maybe scary monsters, outer space creatures, pirates, scare-crows, witches and ghosts. All these themes are still very popular because of old beliefs of visit of spirits of the dead people on this day. Positive costumes have too have gained enough following like of prince or princess, fairies by girls and boys still go in for costumers of a criminal, pirates, robin-hood etc. Now-a-days they pick up costumes form scary movies or serials from TV. The scarier the character's role, the more demand for their costumes. Other popular Halloween costume being like a fruit or vegetable like tomatoes or pumpkin or use a box covered with foil to become a robot or a TV set. There are no limits for the fanciful creations but the limit being that the costume and festivities should be within the decency limits. But nowadays, that too is being crossed by certain anti-social elements and take advantage of the festival to resort to unruly behaviour. Halloween has long been a night of law breaking.

The children would and some still do,( specially in small towns, where everyone knows each other) go from door to door in their neighbourhood, knocking and saying Trick or Treat, meaning give us a treat (almost always candy only) or we will play a trick on you. Some long time back when our parents were children themselves, the 'unhappy' children would throw eggs, or knock something down, smash Jack-o-lantern (Pumpkin face), or wrap rolls of toilet paper way up on the trees across the yard and around bushes or cars. These are only a few to name but these vary as the creativity of brain varies in naughtiness. Under such eventualities, adults prefer to be discreetly away from the scene and remain indoors! Remaining indoors also becomes handy to answer call bells or hand-out candies to young brats.