Happy Halloween from Canada Web Developer
Halloween is a fun time of year filled with exciting costumes, yummy candy, and festive decorations. Whether you have friends that wait year round for the opportunity to don their Halloween attire and carve their jack-o-lanterns, or your buddies simply appreciate the holiday for a few good plays-on-words, here at Canada Web Developer we hope your Halloween is all treats and no tricks…enjoy the candy and festivities!
What is Halloween?
Halloween, also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows’ Eve, or All Saints’ Eve, is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers.
According to many scholars, All Hallows’ Eve is a Christianized feast influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain.
Other scholars maintain that it originated independently of Samhain and has solely Christian roots.
Typical contemporary festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related “guising”), attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing and divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories and watching horror films. In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows’ Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although in other locations, these solemn customs are less pronounced in favor of a more commercial and secular celebration. Because many Western Christian denominations encourage, although most no longer require, abstinence from meat on All Hallows’ Eve, the tradition of eating certain vegetarian foods for this vigil day developed, including the consumption of apples, colcannon, cider, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.
