What is the American holiday we recently loved in Greece?

“trick or treat”
It is the night before the feast of All Saints on November 1.

Halloween is celebrated on October 31 in many countries, but especially in the US.

During the night it is common for the children to dress up in something scary and visit the houses to collect sweets and treats. It is the well-known “trick or treat”.

This holiday is reminiscent of Halloween, but it is very different.

The Celts and “All Hallow Even”
The word “Halloween” comes from the expression “All Hallow Even” as an abbreviation.

However, this is believed to be a metaphor for the feast of the god of the underworld, which was worshiped by the Celts, since, as in the case of the ancient Greek myth of Persephone, the Celts also celebrated the arrival of winter and according to their belief was the night when the dead ascended to the earth.

This day marked the end of the harvest and the summer, the warm season of the year and the beginning of the other half, the dark winter.

The Celts believed that on the night before the New Year, October 31, the line between the world of the living and the dead became blurred and indistinguishable, rendering the normal laws of space and time temporarily inactive, allowing a window to open. opened from which the spirit world could mingle with the living world.

It was a night when the dead could return to the land of the living to celebrate with their families or tribes.

The predominant colors in the decorations are orange and black. Orange because it symbolizes the crops and black for the dead.

the “Samhain”
The origin of the festival is from the ancient Celtic festival “Samhain”.

The Celts lived in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France 2000 years ago and celebrated their New Year on November 1.

Essentially, the celebration of Samhain is about halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice.

Samhain was one of the four Celtic festivals; Lughnasadh (on August 1). In other words, festivals that marked the changing of the seasons.

On the day of the celebration, Ireland’s great burial mounds were lit with torches on the interior walls so that the ghosts of the dead could find their way.

This was also the night the Celts believed that the spirits of the dead returned to earth and celebrated Samhain. They themselves believed that the presence of spirits on Earth made it easier for the Druids (Celtic priests) to make predictions about the future. During the feast they lit fires, wore costumes of animal heads and skins, and tried to predict each other’s fate but also to appease evil spirits.

The Legend of Jack-o-lantern

If there’s one thing that stands out in the celebration of Halloween, it’s the lanterns made of pumpkins, engraved with human features, but with faces of horror.

These lanterns come from Irish traditions and were used to illuminate the lost soul of Jack, a notorious con man trapped between the two worlds.

Legend has it that Jack tricked the devil into getting him to climb a tree by carving the image of a cross on his trunk to trap him there.

Jack’s jokes generally resulted in him being denied entry to Paradise when he died, and because he also angered the devil who ruled hell, he lost his entry into hell.

Thus Jack was left with a lost soul, caught between the world of the dead and the world of the living. As a consolation, the devil gave him some embers to light his way in the darkness between the two worlds.

Since then, Jack has been making pumpkin lanterns, putting a candle in them and wandering the earth looking for a place to rest. Hence the name Jack-o-lantern.