HALLOWEEN

1. HALLOWEEN

2. HALLOWEEN • Halloween (also spelled Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31

3. The day is often associated with orange and black, and is strongly associated with symbols like the jack-o'-lantern. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, ghost tours, bonfires, pranks, reading scary stories, and watching horror films.

4. Halloween costumes are traditionally those of monsters such as ghosts, skeletons, witches and devils. They are said to be used to scare off demons. Costumes are also based on characters from television shows, movies, and other pop culture icons.

5. FOODS • Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America), caramel or taffy apples are a common Halloween treat made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.

6. Pumpkin pie is a traditional North American sweet dessert, a tradition during the fall and early winter especially for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The pumpkin is a symbol of harvest time and featured also at Halloween

7. The pie consists of a pumpkin-based custard, ranging in colour from orange to brown, baked in a single pie shell, rarely with a top crust. The pie is generally flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger.

8. CUSTOMS • Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before marriage, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

9. In this Halloween greeting card from 1904, divination is depicted: the young woman looking into a mirror in a darkened room hopes to catch a glimpse of the face of her future husband

10. Trick-or-treating and guising • Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?"

11. The word "trick" refers to a threat to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. In some parts of Ireland and Scotland children still go guising. In this custom the child performs some sort of show, i.e. sings a song or tells a ghost story, in order to earn their treats.