Although Halloween is not a legal holiday, it is very distinctive: the iconic colors are orange and black, and pumpkins carved into faces are a famous landscape. Traditional Halloween activities include "candy pranks", masquerade parties, going to haunted playing tag, watching horror movies under the covers, and carving pumpkins into faces.
The predecessor of Halloween is Shaman Festival, which was used by the ancient Celts to celebrate the end of the harvest season, also known as "Celtic New Year". The Celts believe that1October 3 1 day is the boundary between the living and the dead. On this day, all kinds of demons and ghosts raged in the world, causing pestilence and famine. So they slaughtered cattle and sheep as winter hoarding, put on masks and clothes symbolizing monsters, and threw the bones of cattle and sheep into the bonfire, hoping that wandering ghosts would be comforted and not make trouble on earth.
The theme of Halloween is scary things such as ghosts, death and magic. People usually dress up ghosts, ghouls, zombies, skeletons, witches, demons, bats, black cats, spiders, mummies, werewolves, ghosts and owls on Halloween, as well as Frankenstein in science fiction and vampires. Autumn elements such as pumpkins and scarecrows often appear on Halloween. The three "popular colors" of Halloween are: orange of pumpkin, black of night and death, and white of moonlight, ghosts and skeletons.
As early as in Europe, people used to make "grimace lanterns" by lighting candles at the midpoint of hollowed-out radishes, but American immigrants soon replaced radishes with pumpkins, because pumpkins are big and it is easier to carve patterns. People carve ferocious faces on pumpkins and put them on porches or steps to scare away ghosts who come to harass them.
Candy pranks are a traditional activity for children on Halloween. They dress up as ghosts, animals, cartoons and even celebrities. In short, the more outrageous they are, the better they look. Knock on the door from door to door and say "Trick or treat!" to the person who opens the door. It means you have to give me candy as a reward, or I will play a prank on your family! Most people are friendly to children and give them candy generously.
The custom of dressing up for Halloween has been popular since the beginning of the 20th century. Traditional Halloween costumes are characterized by imitating scary things such as monsters or things that don't exist in reality. Vampires, demons, ghosts, skeletons and witches are the most common imitation objects. At present, the popular trend also includes imitating the president, movie stars and cartoon characters.
Halloween coincides with the harvest season of apples, so "apples dipped in sugar" has become a traditional Halloween food. The method is to put a stick on the whole apple and stir it in syrup, so that a layer of syrup is attached to the surface. Sometimes after dipping in syrup, I dip in some broken nuts. People call this kind of food candy apple, toffee apple or caramel apple, which is a bit like a large sugar gourd.