How much do you Know about Halloween?

HALLOWEEN :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9pzNpKKRYc

Every year, more and more people in Spain dress up and party on the 31^st of October. But Halloween – like McDonalds, Starbucks and Coca Cola – came here from the USA, and it is there where they really celebrate in style. 

Photo credit: Lorika13 / Foter / CC BY-NC

7 Billion Dollars

64% of Americans plan to celebrate Halloween this year, and around 7 billion dollars is spent on sweets, costumes and decorations every year. $350 million is also spent on costumes for their pets!

Most Popular Halloween Outfits of 2014

Girls – Elsa, from the film Frozen.

Boys – Superman

Adults – Witches 

Origins

Irish emigrants to the New World took the festival across the Atlantic with them. It combined the old Celtic night of Samhain and the Christian celebration of All-hallows(or All Saints Day), and the customs and activities everybody associates with Halloween have their origins in old ideas and superstitions.

Disguises

People first started disguising themselves as ghosts and demons because they wanted to hide from “real” spirits walking the streets.  The two colours typically linked with Halloween are orange – which represents autumn and theharvest – and black – a reminder that this date marks the boundary between life and death.

Pumpkins

One story is that Jack-o-lantern, the pumpkin with the candle inside, was a clever old man who tricked the devil into not taking his soul, but had to spend the rest of his eternal life walking the earth carrying his light.

Trick or Treat

Trick or treating (children knocking on doors and asking for sweets) has been common in the USA since the 1920s, but 500 years earlier in different parts of Europe, people would go to houses and say prayers, or maybe perform a play, in return for food or drink.

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Whatever your plans are for Halloween, have fun! And if carving that pumpkin seems like hard work, you are lucky it isn’t the one grown in Switzerland last year, which weighed 1,054 kilos!

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Your turn!

What is your favourite holiday? Why?

Don’t forget to visit the Halloween Corner

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