Origins
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient celtic festival of samhian.
The celts, who lived 2000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on the first of november.
This day is the end of the summer and the start of the dark and cold winter that was associated with the death of humans. They believed that in this night the ghosts returned to earth. During the celebration they sacrificed crops and they used costumes too.
Pumpkins
Pumpkins are used as a symbol of Halloween since the Irish legend of Stingy Jack. People believed that the soul of this bad man named Jack still walked the earth and used carved out turnips and pumpkins to scare him away.
Now the colours of Halloween are the colours of a pumpkin: the orange outside and the black inside.
We have another theory: the orange outside represents the happiness of summer, the black inside the pumpkin represents the fear of winter. Fear is something we usually keep to ourselves.
Sweets
During the original Halloween children went from door to door to ask for a soul cake. Now children come and say: trick or treat!
Francesca M. e Matteo (Class 5)
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