Halloween - How do you Celebrate it around the world ?

[Thomas H]

Good Day , I wanted to see how others celebrate the holiday ( Halloween )
I had been reading up on the day and found it has allot of roots in Scotland and Ireland .

So how do you celebrate it ?

What are some traditions you will do ?

Scotland ?

Ireland ?

** Keep in mind this is a friendly question **

[Riverkilt]

Sitting out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear at midnight. That way I don't have to buy all that candy and get up and down and up and down for the kids and don't have to feel shame about contributing to a crummy diet for them. The Great Pumpkin will come this year...he will....

My little town actually passed an ordinance limiting trick or treating to the hours from 4pm to 8pm.

At my house they HAVE to ask...if they don't say "Trick or Treat" I withhold the sugar poison until they do. No hand outs.

[Jock Scot]

Halloween's roots came from Scotland and Ireland? I don't know one way or the other. What I seem to recall(I was born in 1940) in mainland UK, Halloween was not "celebrated" at all until perhaps the 1970/80's and even then not much. At a guess it was not really until the 1990's that it all became a general event for many. I have to confess the whole shindig is still a complete mystery to me and my family to this day and I have always regarded it as a new fangled shopkeepers money making idea. Also November 5 is Guy Fawkes (bonfire night)which in my experience was a far more important affair altogether.

[Thomas H]

I seen this in Wikipedia under Halloween - this write up is what got me wanting to know about how Scotland and other parts of the world celebrate Halloween .

In modern Ireland, Scotland, Mann and Wales, the festival included mumming and guising,[41] the latter of which goes back at least as far as the 16th century.[42] This involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise) reciting verses in exchange for food.[41] It may have come from the Christian custom of souling (see below) or it may have an ancient Celtic origin, with the costumes being a means of imitating, or disguising oneself from, the Aos Sí. In Scotland, youths went about with masked, painted or blackened faces.[41] F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient festival included people in costume representing the spirits, and that faces were marked with ashes taken from the sacred bonfire.[42] In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod.[41] In Orkney and Glamorgan, young people dressed as the opposite gender.[41] In parts of southern Ireland, the guisers included a hobby horse. A man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses—some of which had pagan overtones—in exchange for food. By donating food, the household could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'.[43][44] Elsewhere in Europe, mumming and hobby horses were part of other festivals. However, they may have been "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers".[41] When "imitating malignant spirits it was a very short step from guising to playing pranks".[41] The guisers commonly played pranks in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, and this spread to England in the 20th century.[41]

[creagdhubh]

My wife and I typically dress up in costume (this year it's a darker version of Alice, called "Malice" and the Mad Hatter, called "The Evil Mad Hatter") and attend two annual All Hallow's Eve parties hosted by some friends of ours. It's just another excuse to act like children, with the exception of being able to consume a multitude of pints and drams.

Here's a few photos from one party that has come and gone already (and no, that is not a diced Balmoral, hahaha!):

[Calgacus]

Hallowe'en's roots lie in the pagan festival of Samhain. As a child in lowland Scotland, we would go 'guising', which involves dressing up in disguise, meeting with the other local children and going door to door. Guisers were expected to perform in some way, singing or telling jokes, in return for some sort of treat such as food, sweets or a sixpence. The other common thing was to make and carry a lantern made from a neep. A neep is known elsewhere as a swede, the same as you have with haggis and tatties. The neep is hollowed out and a scary face is cut on one side. A string handle is attached, and a candle is placed inside. There were no pumpkins available in Scotland in my youth, to my knowledge.

Nowadays the neep is replaced by the pumpkin, being much easier to hollow out, and guising is being replaced by 'trick or treat' due to the spread of American culture in the media.

Hallowe'en was the night when witches & ghosts were abroad, this tradition carrying on from its pagan roots, where Samhain was a time when the otherworld was close this world was accessible from it. It did tend to merge a bit in the mind of the child with Bonfire Night, when we burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, who was a member of a group which attempted to kill King James VI by blowing up the Westminster Houses of parliament, and was captured on 5th November 1605

[StevieR]

When I was a small boy in Scotland we used to go "guising" at Halloween. This would have been in the late sixties. It involved dressing up in the usual spooky costume and visiting friends and neighbours for treats - however, there was no trick or treating. We were expected to perform a small party piece, a poem or song or suchlike before being rewarded with (usually) homemade goodies.

When we moved down South, Halloween was not celebrated. As Jock says, November the fifth was "the big one".

Halloween seems to have caught on in recent years, my kids went trick or treating when they were small and we keep a pile of sweeties to hand and a glowing pumpkin in the porch to advertise we are amenable to young ghosties and ghoulies. Lots of the older generation don't bother.

[cessna152towser]

Like Calgalus and Stevie R above, as a child I went guising at Hallowe'en though that was fifty years ago and the tradition has largely died out nowadays.
Hallowe'en is still celebrated big time in Whitby on the north-east coast of England which is where Dracula landed in the Bram Stoker novel. There is a goth festival with musical performances on the Friday and Saturday nights and thousands of people from all over the country go there and dress for the occasion. This year as Hallowe'en falls midweek the big day will be Saturday 2nd November and I am planning to be there, dressed the same as in 2010. For some pics from the 2010 event see this thread:-
http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-whitby-62372/

[StevieR]

And from deep, deep in the memory banks:

"Halloween, the night between,
Three wee witches on the green,
One wi' a trumpet, one wi' a drum,
And one wi' a pancake stuck tae her bum!"

Comedy genius - when you're six or seven at least!

[kiltedrennie]

In the U.S. it's become one of the biggest holidays (at least in $ spent) next to Christmas. My sister, until recently , hosted a party every year. The first half was geared toward children with a bonfire, food, and games including a Halloween themed piñata full of candy the kids would line up to bust open with a bat. Later in the evening, once the kids were secured elsewhere, the adult party would begin with adult liquid "treats" and continue until the early morning.

When I was a child (late 1960's into the 70's), we were costumed and driven around the rural four mile "block" we lived on (more cows in that square mile than people) going door to door collecting home made treats. In later years we would be dropped off in the nearest town so we could haul in a large load of candy. In hind site, I think I enjoyed the local trick-o-treating than town. If you'd asked me back then I would have raved about the pillow case full of candy from town.

With my kids, we walked them around our neighborhood to trick-o-treat and then went to a party hosted by the downtown development authority and local businesses for games and treats.

This is the first year my kids are, as they say, "too old" to do more than hang around with their friends and pass out treats. With the demise of my sister's party (it got to be too much for her to host), we're skipping the holiday.