Writing practice : customs about Halloween

Halloween is a festivity of Celtic origins that was born 2000 years ago because people though that souls and spirits of death people could come back , looking for a new body to live in and in order to damage crops. So they were afraid to meet them, and as a result they tried to make the spirits afraid and to send them away, dressing frightening customs and making big fires. This feast day was also the celebration of the end of the summer and the end of the harvests.

In the truth, Halloween originally celebrated the end of the year, on the 31^s of October, and the beginnig of the new year, on the 1^st of November ; moreover, since during this months the weather is cold, you celebrate also the beginning of winter, the reason why also the death was associated with this period of darkness and cold.

Still now Halloween is celebrated on the 31^st of October and it's a very important festivity all over the world, even if the reason why now, we celebrate it, is different from the past. Nowadays on Halloween children and teenagers dress up such as ghosts, orrible monsters, skeletons and witches.

Two particulary customs of this festivity are: the big pumpkins and the lanters, that both come from Irish folklore; people usually decorate pumkins in some strange and colourful ways, and they put them in their garden or in front of their windows.

Another tradition for children is to move from house to house and to ring at the neighbours' door bell in the night, saying “Treat or trick” : the person who opens the door might gives them money, cakes, or chocolate sweets, otherwise children will make to her/him some dirty and truly bizzare treats.