Halloween - How do you Celebrate it around the world ?

[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