HALLOWEEN

HALLOWEEN

With its pumpkins, its monstres costumesand its children knocking on the doors of the houses to collect candies,Halloween is a famous celebration in all english speaking countries.

Now , it's even celebrated in France.

It's celebreted on October 31.

This celebration has got two origins .

The first one is celtic ; in the old time the celt celebrate the end of the summer and the begining of the next year.

The second origin is Catholic ; it cames from the catholic « alls saints » day. On « all saints » day the dead were supposed to come and to be the living. Thus the people dressed up with horrible clothes and made a lot of noise to scare the dead. They also made a cake called « soul cake ». Beggars used to go from house to house, and from village to village, to ask for a piece of cake, they prayed for their dead. If not, they didn't pray, the dead come to take the living.

In fact, the « trick or treat » comes from the the tradition of the soul cake. Little by little, it has changed.

The beggars been replaced by the children and the soul cake has been replaced by at first oranges, then by candies.

The original trick or treat is that the children with throw flour at the peaple who refused to give them sweets.

There is also, the Jack O'Lantern tradition. It comes from the tale of Jack.  

Jack was an alcoholic dishonest Irish man. One day,  Jack traped the devil in the tree.

To be free,  Jack made a deal with the devil. When Jack died, the devil held his promise and Jack went to paradise.

There, god told him that he had made too many sins to be accepted in heaven .

So Jack was forced to wander until the end of times.

The devil gave and ember to light his path. Jack carved a turnip and put his ember inside.

Later when the first Irish pilgrims in America, there were mon turnips, so they used a pumkin.

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