Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, celebrated at the end of October. Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Traditions from Samhain include carving pumpkins and turnips into lanterns, telling ghost stories, and children going door-to-door in costumes collecting treats. The modern Halloween traditions of dressing in costumes and trick-or-treating have roots in medieval practices of making soul cakes for the dead and lighting bonfires to celebrate connections between communities.

1. HALLOWEEN
TRICK OR TREAT
Claudete Mello, ESL coach –
claudetemello@hotmail.com

2. In the USA and Canada, every October brings an avalanche of carved
pumpkins, dancing skeletons, ghosts, and witches riding on brooms.
Halloween is full of frightening ghost stories, pranks,
costumes and bizarre games.
HALLOWEEN

3. HALLOWEEN
"What does HALLOWEEN mean?"
The name is a shortened version of "All Hallows' Even," the eve of All
Hallows' Day.
"Hallow" is Old English for "holy person," and All Hallows' Day is another
name for All Saints' Day.
At some point, people began referring to All Hallows' Even as "Hallowe'en"
and then "Halloween."

4. HALLOWEEN
Most of the traditions of Halloween date back to Samhain (sow-en), the
ancient Celtic New Year.
Samhain, which translates to "end of summer," occurred around the end
of October, when the weather started to get cold.

5. Trick or Treating
In medieval times, one All Souls' Day practice was to make "soul cakes,"
bread desserts with a topping. Children would go door-to-door begging
for the cakes. For every cake a child collected, he or she would have to
say a prayer for the dead relatives of the person who gave the cake.
The children sang a soul cake song along the lines of the modern "Trick-
or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat." One version of
the song went:
A soul cake! A soul cake! Have mercy on all Christian souls, for A soul
cake!

6. Original Celtic Tradition
There is also some evidence of trick-or-treat type activities in the
original Celtic tradition.
Celtic children would walk door to door to collect firewood for a giant
communal bonfire. Once the bonfire was burning, the revelers would
extinguish all the other fires in the village. They would then relight
every fire with a flame taken from the Samhain bonfire, as a symbol of
the people's connection to one another.

7. Jack-o-Lantern
As part of the Samhain celebration, Celts would bring home an ember
from the communal bonfire at the end of the night. They carried these
embers in hollowed-out turnips, creating a lantern resembling the
modern day jack-o'-lantern.

8. Thanks For Watching & Happy Halloween!
Adapted by Claudete Mello from ”How Stuff Works”