We associate Halloween with witches, haunted houses, pumpkins, trick-or-treating and black cats but do you know what the origins of Halloween are? We are not really sure about the true origins of Halloween. We think it started thousands of years ago, when the Celts celebrated the end of the summer and the beginning of winter. The Celts believed that the souls of the dead visited Earth on the last day of October. This festival was known as Samhain. In the 8th century, the Catholic Church made 1st November a church holiday to honour all the Saints. It was usual to pray for the dead on this day and was originally known as All Hallows’ Day. The name Halloween comes from All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Hallows’ Day. Today, we know it as All Saints’ Day. In the 19th century, Irish and Scottish immigrants went to the USA and took their Halloween customs with them. These developed gradually into the Halloween customs we know today. Nowadays, Halloween is extremely popular in the USA and the world’s largest Halloween parade takes place in New York.
(Macmillan ELT)
Solve this Halloween Vocabulary Quiz (you can print)
