Traditional Festivals

Worldwide

Halloween
(Origins, practices and similar festivals)

By Ginny Ruadh (P7)

 Around the world

• Halloween is not celebrated in all countries

and regions of the world.

• For those countries that do celebrate - the

traditions and importance of the
celebration differs.
• Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is
observed mostly in Ireland,
Scotland, Canada and the
United States.

• 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 jack-o'-lanterns, ghost
tours, bonfires, apple bobbing,
visiting haunted attractions,
committing pranks, telling
ghost stories or other
frightening tales, and watching
horror films.
 Paganism
• Celtic Neo-Pagans consider the season a holy
time of year. Neo-Pagans most often
celebrate this day as Samhain and observe
the end of the harvest season.

• Celtic Re-constructionists, and others who

maintain ancestral customs, make offerings
to the gods and the ancestors.
 As time passed…
1. With the onset of Christianity, the festival in November
became All Hallows' Day on November 1.

2. This was followed by All Souls' Day, on November 2.

3. Over time, the night of October 31 came to be called

All Hallow's Eve.

4. This eventually changed into the holiday known as

Halloween (festival dedicated to the dead).
 Traditional foods
Harvest related foods:
Candy apples
• Barmbrack (Ireland)
• Bonfire toffee (Great Britain)
• Candy apples/toffee apples
• Candy corn, candy pumpkins
(North America)
• Colcannon (Ireland)
• Pumpkin, pumpkin pie,
pumpkin bread, roasted
pumpkin seeds
• Roasted sweet corn
• Soul cakes

and of course lots of sweets

(shaped like skulls, pumpkins,
bats, worms, etc. )
 Traditional Activites
• Carving Lanterns from Apple bobbing
Turnips and pumpkins
• Trick and Treating
(Collecting sweets)
• Themed costume dress-
up and parties
• telling ghost stories
• bonfires,
• apple bobbing,
• visiting haunted places,
• playing pranks,
• watching horror films.
 Traditional Celtic Festival:
3 day lunar festival around 31 October

SAMHAIN
• In medieval Ireland, Samhain became the principal festival,
celebrated with a great assembly at the royal court in Tara,
lasting for three days.

• After being ritually started on the Hill of Tlachtga, a bonfire

was set alight on the Hill of Tara, which served as a beacon,
signalling to people gathered atop hills all across Ireland to
light their ritual bonfires.
• Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the "lighter half" of
the year and beginning of the "darker half".

• It was traditionally celebrated over the course of several days.

• It has some elements of a festival of the dead.

• The Gaels believed that the border between this world and the
otherworld became thin on Samhain; because so many animals and
plants were dying, it thus allowed the dead to reach back through the
veil that separated them from the living.
• Bonfires played a large part in the festivities.

• People & their livestock would often walk between two bonfires as a
cleansing ritual. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its
flames.

• In Scotland the dead were acted out by young men dressed in white
with masked, veiled or blackened faces.

• Samhnag — turnips were hollowed-out and carved with faces to make

lanterns — these were used to ward off harmful spirits.

• The Gaelic festival became associated with the Catholic All Saints' Day
and All Souls' Day. It is now connected with Halloween - a name first
used in the 16th century as a Scottish short version of “All-Hallows-
Even”.

• Samhain is celebrated as a religious festival by some neopagans.

• Halloween as celebrated in America is said to
have been partly started by the many Irish
immigrants who arrived in the country
during the Irish Potato Famine Years (mid
19th century).

• The Irish blend of Celtic ritual and Catholic

tradition features in America today.
• On the pre-christian Celtic calendar, Samhain
marked the end of the grazing season and
the start of the CELTIC NEW YEAR with a
great fest on the first of November.

• The rites and rituals of the eve of Samhain –

a night of dread and danger – inspired the
modern tradition.
 Today in Wicca
• Samhain is one of the eight annual festivals, often referred to as
'Sabbats', observed as part of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year.

• It is considered by most Wiccans to be the most important of the four

'greater Sabbats'.

• It is generally observed on October 31 in the Northern Hemisphere,

starting at sundown.

• Samhain is considered by some Wiccans as a time to celebrate the lives

of those who have passed on, and it often involves paying respect to
ancestors, family members, elders of the faith, friends, pets and other
loved ones who have died.

• In some rituals the spirits of the departed are invited to attend the
festivities.

• It is seen as a festival of darkness, which is balanced at the opposite

point of the wheel by the spring festival of Beltane, which Wiccans
celebrate as a festival of light and fertility
 Traditional Brittany Festival

SAMHAIN
(with a difference)
 Brittany
• In parts of western Brittany, Samhain is still
celebrated with the baking of kornigou.

• These are cakes baked in the shape of

antlers to commemorate the god of winter,
shedding his horns as he returns to his
kingdom in the Otherworld.
Similar festivals
 Traditional Chinese Festival
7th month of the lunar year

HUNGRY GHOST
• During the hungry festival celebrated
during the seventh month of the lunar New
Year, fake paper money is burned as an
offering to ghosts said to arrive from the
underworld.

• Known as Ye Lan and observed primarily in

China, Malaysia and Singapore, the festival
features performances and special food to
feed restless spirts.
 Ancient Roman Festival
13 May

LEMURIA
(Feast of the Dead)
• The Romans identified Samhain with their
own feast of the dead, the Lemuria.

• The difference is that their day of the dead

was observed in the days leading up to 13
May.
 Traditional Lebanese Christian Festival

3 December

SAINT BARBARA
 Traditional American Festival
31 October

SLEEPY HOLLOW
 Traditional Mexican Festival
2 November

DAY OF THE DEAD

Traditional Korean Festival:

3 days – Harvest Moon

CHUSEOK
 Traditional Welsh Festival
31 October

NOS GALAN GAEAF

(Calan Gaeaf)
As with Samhain, this marks the beginning of the dark half of the year and it
officially begins at sunset on October 31.

The Cornish equivalent of this holiday is known as Allantide or in the revived

Cornish language Nos Calan Gwaf.
 Traditional Manx Festival

HOP TU NAA
• The Manx celebrate Hop-tu-Naa, which is a
celebration of the original New Year's Eve.
• Hop-tu-Naa predates Halloween and it is the
celebration of the original New Year's Eve (Oie
Houney)
• The term is Manx Gaelic in origin, deriving from
Shogh ta’n Oie, meaning "this is the night".
• Traditionally, children dress as scary beings, carry
turnips rather than pumpkins and sing an
Anglicised version of Jinnie the Witch and may go
from house to house asking for sweets or money.
• The song sometimes goes like this:

Hop-tu-Naa
My mother's gone away
And she wont be back until the morning

Jinnie the Witch flew over the house

To fetch the stick to lather the mouse

Hop-tu-Naa
My mother's gone away
And she wont be back until the morning
Hop-tu-Naa, Traa-la-laa
Other verses go something like this

Hop-tu-naa! put in the pot

Hop-tu-naa! put in the pan
Hop-tu-naa! I burnt me throt (throat)
Hop-tu-naa! guess where I ran ?
Hop-tu-naa! I ran to the well
Hop-tu-naa! and drank my fill
Hop-tu-naa! and on the way back
Hop-tu-naa! I met a witch cat
Hop-tu-naa! the cat began to grin
Hop-tu-naa! and I began to run
Hop-tu-naa! I ran to Ronague
Hop-tu-naa! guess what I saw there ?
Hop-tu-naa! I saw an old woman
Hop-tu-naa! baking bonnags
Hop-tu-naa! roasting sconnags
Hop-tu-naa! I asked her for a bit
Hop-tu-naa! she gave me a bit
as big as me big toe
Hop-tu-naa! she dipped it in milk
Hop-tu-naa! she wrapped it in silk
Hop-tu-naa! Traa la lay!
Are you going to give us anything
before we run away with the light of the moon ?
 Traditional Japanese Festival
3 day holiday – Lunar - October

OKINAWA ISLAND -
OBON
 GO GREEN – for Halloween
There seems to be a lot of landfill with worldwide festivals like Halloween,
Easter, Christmas.

Think about it - each time you buy something new there is plastic
packaging and cardboard packaging and before you know it the dustbin
is overflowing with packaging. Its all bad for the environment.

• So instead of buying new costumes - Swap with friends / other families

in your neighbourhood.

• Instead of Halloween-store makeup kits - use real eco-friendly makeup

eg. Zinc oxide in place of white face paint. Brown, green, grey and blue
eyeshadows, and dark eyeliner can be used to create scars and bruises.
Only hand out sweets made with organic sugar or fair trade chocolate.
Natural individually wrapped candies incl. lollipops, chocolates, and
toffee.

• Instead of buying a new plastic pumpkin this year, decorate your own
bag.
 Did you know that there really are
VAMPIRE BATS?
• They do drink only blood – mostly
from animals but sometimes humans
too.

• They need to drink half their body

weight in blood at least every second
day or else they will die.

Interesting • They have a way of licking the blood

for about 30 minutes without waking
the animal up!!!
Facts • Their body is the size of a human
thumb and they can be tamed.

• They live about 20 years.

1. http://travel.nationalgeographic.co
m/travel/countries/halloween-quiz
References
2. http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.
com/greenscene/2009/10/green-
halloween-ideas.html
3. http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.
com/jane-of-the-jungle-
gym/2010/10/putting-the-green-in-
halloween.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain
5. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
kids/animals/creaturefeature/vampir
e-bat/
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallowe
%27en
7. http://theghostofelectricity.blogspo
t.com/2008_10_01_archive.html
8. http://www.cookidscook.com/toffee
-apple-recipe.html
9. http://keetsa.com/blog/eco-
friendly/ghoulish-solar-powered-
halloween-decorations/
10. http://afsachapter615.org/aac/?p=7
11. http://trendtempo.com/vampire-
bats.html