Halloween

Halloween is a festival that takes place every year on October 31. It is a time when
children and adults dress up in costumes, go trick or treating and make jack-o-lanterns from
empty pumpkins.

In ancient Rome the festival of Pomona was held in honour of the Roman goddess of
fruits and gardens. At about 800 A.D. The Roman Catholic Church introduced a new holiday
which they called All Saints’ Day. It was celebrated on November 1 and the evening before
became known as All Hallows’ Eve, Hallow was the old word for “holy". Later on All Hallows’
Eve was shortened to Halloween. 200 years later All Souls’ Day became a church holiday. It
was a day on which people prayed for all their dead relatives, friends and the people that
they had known.

Today Halloween is celebrated mainly by children who dress up as ghosts, witches

and other evil spirits. When they go trick or treating from house to house they ask for sweets
(a treat) or else they threaten to play tricks on the people who don’t give them anything.
Some children and adults go to Halloween parties where they have fun and play games like
bobbing the apple in a tub of water.
In many European countries people visit the graves of their relatives on All Saints’ or
All Souls’ Day. At first Halloween was not celebrated in Europe as it was in America but
during the past few decades Halloween parties have become more and more popular in
Europe too.

The jack-o’-lantern is closely connected with Halloween. It is a pumpkin that you

empty and carve a face into. Most of them have a candle or some other light in them.
According to an old Irish story jack -o’-lanterns were named after a man called Jack.
He could not go to heaven because he was an evil person and often in a bad mood .
However, he couldn’t go to hell either because he had tricked the devil many times. So Jack
had to stay on Earth forever and wander around with his lantern.