What is the holiday of Halloween

Halloween (alias: Zhusheng Festival, English name: Halloween) is a traditional Western holiday, the date is in the calendar on November 1 every year. The night before Halloween, October 31, is the most lively moment of this festival, children will dress up as all kinds of cute ghosts and monsters knocking on the door door from house to house, asking for candy, or else they will be trick-or-treating. Legend has it that on this night, ghosts and goblins dressed as children mix with the crowds to celebrate Halloween.

All Saints Day, also known as "All Saints' Day", is one of the Catholic and Orthodox festivals, and is a traditional holiday in Western countries. The Chinese-speaking regions often mistakenly refer to All Saints' Eve as Halloween. "Hallow" comes from the Middle English halwen, which is very close to the word holy, and in some areas of Scotland and Canada, All Saints' Day is still called "All Hallow Mas". On that day, a Mass was celebrated to celebrate all the saints (Hallow) in heaven. Nowadays, the society organizes all kinds of activities full of demons and ghosts on the night of October 31 for commercial interests or other purposes, which completely deviates from the sacred meaning of Halloween.

On the origin of Halloween, there are many versions, the more widely circulated are:

More than two thousand years ago, the Christian Church in Europe, November 1 as "the world's saints day" (All Hallows' Day). "Hallow" means saint. Legend has it that the Celts, who lived in Ireland and Scotland since 500 B.C., moved the holiday forward one day, to October 31st. They considered that day to be the official end of summer, the beginning of the New Year and the start of the harsh winter. It was believed that the spirits of the dead would return to their homelands on this day to find life in the living and regenerate themselves, and that this was the only hope for regeneration after death. The living are afraid that the spirits of the dead will come to take over their lives, so people extinguish the fire and candles on this day so that the spirits of the dead cannot find the living, and dress themselves up as demons and ghosts to scare the spirits of the dead away. Afterward, they would put the fires and candles back on to start a new year.

Originally, Halloween was actually a holiday that praised fall, just as May Day praises spring. The ancient priests of Gaul, Britain and Ireland, the Druids, had a great festival in praise of autumn that lasted all day from midnight on October 31st to the following day, November 1st. They believed that on that night their great god of death, Saman, summoned all the ghosts of those who had died that year, and that these evil spirits were to be punished by being consigned to animal life. Surely the mere thought of such a ghostly gathering was enough to frighten the simple-minded fools of the day. So they lit sky-high bonfires and kept a close watch on these evil spirits. That's how the saying that there were witches and ghosts everywhere on the night before Halloween began. To this day there are people in certain isolated parts of Europe who believe this to be true.

The ancient Romans also had a festival on Nov. 1 that was used to honor their goddess Pomona. They roasted nuts and apples in front of a roaring bonfire. Our Halloween seems to be a blend of the ancient Romans' holiday with that of the Druids.

Halloween activities turned out to be very simple and mostly took place in churches. But throughout Europe, people saw the night before Halloween as a chance to have fun, tell ghost stories and scare each other. So instead of celebrating the fall, it became a festival of gods and monsters, witches and ghosts.