万圣节
Ever wondered about the history of Halloween? It's time to hit the... info below!
Halloween is celebrated on the 31st of October. It derived from the ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to scare off ghosts👻. In the middle ages the pagan rituals went through Christianisation, and the festival gradually became All Saints' Day. The night before is Halloween 🌃.
Where is Halloween celebrated? 🎃
Firstly, it spread on the British Isles and in Ireland. Afterwards it migrated with natives to the USA. In Russia it's not very popular, although the young generation is very excited about arranging costume parties and celebrating just for fun.
The main symbols of Halloween are:
- Jack-o-lantern🎃, a hollow pumpkin with a devilish face curved on its front and a candle inside
- the tradition called trick-or-treating🍬🍭, when a bunch of kids dress up as spooky ghosts, vampires and other creatures, and knock on their neighbours' doors saying 「trick-or-treat?」, meaning 「give me candy 🍬 or else you'll die 🍭」
- bats 🦇, witches 🧙, spiders 🕷 and other stuff that gives you chills, we've collected it all in our set.
BTW, did you know that Halloween is the top candy-selling holiday in the United States, well above Valentine's Day, when 48 million pounds of candy is sold, and Easter, which has 65 million pounds sold? Approximately 600 million pounds of candy are sold in the US each year for Halloween. That is way more than how much beer Munich sells for Oktoberfest! If it's possible to compare this data 👹