Happy Halloween!

Last Saturday was Halloween, a day which (until now) I thought was celebrated all over Europe as well. Little did I know that here, in Spain, Halloween is a relatively new holiday. In fact, it is barely 5 or 6 years old in Alcalá!

Historical parenthesis: Hallowe'en


“It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints, but is today largely a secular celebration.” - Wikipedia

The Celts regarded the festival of Samhain as their New Year, and “festival of the dead”. They believed that on that day, spirits (good and bad) could pass through to their world. To fool the bad spirits in not harming them, they would dress-up as bad spirits themselves, wearing costumes and masks. The name “Halloween” dates back to the 16th century and is derived from the Old English name “All-Hallows-Even”.

In North America, Halloween is a pretty big event and a great excuse to dress-up and party! (Note that we don’t celebrate the Carnival as much as in Spain.) Schools are decorated with automn colors and scary spiderwebs, and many people turn their house or garage into a haunted house! This makes the children very excited when they go door-to-door to collect candy on Halloween night! At around 6 o’clock, you hear the happy screams of costumed children in the streets, followed by *knock knock*… "TRICK OR TREAT!"

Nowadays, in North America, costumes of witches, draculas and skeletons have become rather ordinary and have given place to costumes of pirates, cowboys, angels, firemen, movie or comic book characters like Spiderman, or even random and ridiculous objects such as… a bottle of ketchup! Remember! In North America, the Carnival is not such a big event, Halloween is our only chance to be crazy!

"TRICK OR TREAT!"