Every year on the evening of October 31, strange and “scary” things happen in North America. Lighted pumpkins, human skeletons, merry ghosts, witches riding brooms make their appearance on the streets of American cities. Children go from house to house singing and their landlords offer them cakes or marshmallows to rest their souls.
The US and Canada celebrate Halloween, a mass-participation celebration that resembles a carnival and caroling together, where fear is hard to separate from laughter and terror from hilarity. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, 41.1 million children participated in the 2018 Halloween celebration and visited 120 million homes.
The term Halloween is a contraction of the words All-Hallow-even and stands for “The Night Before All Hallows’ Eve,” which is celebrated on November 1 in Catholic countries. The holiday is lost in the depths of time. It has pagan roots and is associated with the worship of the Druids by the Celts in Ireland.
It is believed that the souls of people who died during the year are looking to enter a body to gain immortality. The living, for their part, dressed in strange costumes and making noise, try to scare the spirits away. The celebration was brought to America by Irish immigrants sometime in the mid-19th century.
Christian organizations objected, considering the custom to have pagan roots and satanic overtones. The Vatican sees it as a child’s game and therefore condones it.
The day is eagerly awaited by the confectioners of America. The turnover of sweets and candy on Halloween far exceeds that of Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter.
There could not be a better material for movie people. In addition to horror films, several others have Halloween night as their backdrop, from the 1904 silent comedy Halloween Night at the Seminary to the recent parody Scary Movie. The benchmark film for the holiday remains the 1978 horror-thriller Halloween, produced by maestro John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis.
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