HALLOWEEN

Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31, and Halloween 2019
occurred on Thursday, October 31. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic
festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off
ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to
honor all saints. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain.
The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve, and later Halloween. Over time,
Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns,
festive gatherings, donning costumes and eating treats.
The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United
Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold
winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on
the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the
dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was
believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
Did you know? One quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for
Halloween.
Did you know? More people, especially millennials, are buying costumes for their pets.
Twenty percent did so in 2018, up from 16 percent in 2017.
*"Süß oder saueres!" is what you might hear children trick-or-treating in Germany say when
they knock on your door.
Halloween has been celebrated in Germany for just 25 years, and the "trick" aspect of
Halloween traditions makes many Germans angry, according to Spiegel Online, as well as
the overlap with St. Martin's Day, a holiday that follows under two weeks after Halloween on
November 11. On St. Martin's Day children walk around the neighborhood with lanterns,
singing songs and reciting poems in exchange for treats.
Though many Germans are unhappy with Halloween's growing popularity in Germany,
retailers rejoice: Costumes go on sale in department stores and Halloween-themed candy
shows up on supermarket shelves. While in America Halloween costumes can depict just
about anything – from princesses and dragons to movie characters, doctors, and vampires –
in Germany costumes should be scary. If you want to buy a pre-fab costume that is not
horror-themed, check out the costume stores around Fasching (or Karneval, or Fastnacht) in
February, Germany's biggest costumed celebration.
There are more notable Halloween events that happen annually in Germany. The Movie Park
Horror Fest has been, as of 2018, going on for 20 years. Located north of Essen, this event has
plenty of zombies, monsters, and mazes. Finally, the Mayen Market "Festival of Magic" in the
Eifel region includes a parade, pumpkin carving, costumes, and beer. Recently even
LEGOLAND began a Halloween event, and costumed children receive free park admission on
October 31st.
* Koreans don't really do anything for Halloween. there are just a few places like Itaewon. where
are many foreign people, and they are trying to celebrate Halloween.
There are some elements of Halloween, koreans would find offensive, and it's not the whole
scary thing. People wearing almost nothing but calling it a costume.
Halloween as we know it in the United States is still not widely celebrated in South Korea. Trick
or treating is limited to kindergarten parties and English hagwons, and you’re unlikely to see
many jack-o-lanterns or skeletons decorating peoples’ homes.
But in recent years some parts of the holiday have been gaining momentum. In fact, according
to a poll by online retail store Gmarket, 72 percent of Koreans are interested in attending a
Halloween party – with 82 percent of those in their 20s saying they were interested in
participating in festivities.
The problem? Despite the interest, 69 percent of respondents admitted that they had never
actually celebrated Halloween.
Things may be looking up for the spooky holiday, though. This year, many stores, including
Seoul’s Coex Mall are holding special events and sales for the holiday. Dunkin Donuts is
releasing a special “Party Pack” featuring bat- and mummy-shaped donuts, and Holly’s Coffee
has included a Halloween theme for its annual “friends and family sale.” For the first time,
amusement park Lotte World will be turning its folk museum into a haunted house and holding a
special “Halloween Hip-Hop Night Party” on October 30 that will run until 5:00am on the 31st.
The Seoul city government is even getting in on the fun, hosting a Halloween dance party along
the Han River where guests are encouraged to dress in traditional Korean outfits (hanbok).
According to a city official, this party is a way to “interpret Halloween - a Western festivity - in a
Korean way.”

Online, the Halloween spirit continues. “해피 할로윈” (“Happy Halloween”) was a global trending
topic on Twitter throughout the day, thanks in part to SM Entertainment, which held its annual
Halloween party this week featuring many of the biggest names in K-pop decked out elaborate
costumes. Clearly there is plenty of interest in Halloween among Koreans, but there are
certainly some obstacles that remain. One scary part of Halloween in Korea has nothing to do
with ghosts and goblins – it has to do with the outrageous prices for kids’ costumes. A JTBC
News video shows outfits online going for upwards of $500. A store-bought Elsa costume for
Frozen fans will run close to $100. One concerned mother explained that she felt pressure to
buy these expensive costumes for her child because other mothers would be doing so.
One other interesting obstacle could be cultural difference. In Korea, summer is the season for
horror. Most horror movies plan their releases for July and August with the idea that scary
stories can give people a chill to help cool them down during the hot summer months. On the
other hand, because of pagan and Christian religious traditions of honoring the dead in late
October and early November, most Westerners consider fall to be the time to celebrate all
things haunted.
* The idea of French Halloween is seen as yet another imposition of American culture on French
customs and traditions – right after American fast-food chains and ketchup. This alone is
enough to make many French people turn their patriotic nose up at the idea of celebrating or
embracing Halloween in France. Ironically, Halloween actually originates from Europe and is
thought to be of Celtic origins. In fact, wearing a costume or mumming and going door-to-door
on certain holidays has existed since the Middle Ages – only people used to perform short plays
in exchange for food or drink instead of asking for candy.
The French are fiercely proud about their customs almost to a snobbish fault. Anything, or in this
case, any celebration that disrupts or takes away from those traditions is often seen as a threat
not a treat. Since Halloween in France is not a traditional holiday in France, having first been
introduced to France in the 90s, it has the unfortunate luck to occur right in the middle of La
Toussaint, also known in English as All Saints Day, a widely celebrated national holiday in
France on 1 November. On this day, people in France honour the dead by placing flowers on
loved ones’ graves and go to special church events. Banks, stores and businesses are all
closed on this day. But All Saints Day is not just a one-day event. Children have two weeks off
from school beginning mid-October up until 1 November.
Unlike in North America where anything goes when it come to Halloween costumes, the few
adults and kids you see dressed up for Halloween in France will invariably be in traditionally
scary and ghoulish costumes like vampires, ghosts and skeletons. Costumes of the less scary
genre like kittens, princesses and Ninja Turtles are reserved for the top Carnival festivals in
February – a much-loved holiday in France.