Halloween and Costumes!
Halloween or All Saints’ Day is celebrated worldwide on 31 of October. Billions of people are waiting impatiently for this « frightful day» to express their feelings and fantasies. Unimaginable disguises, noisy parties, desperate jokes…! A perfect chance to behave outrageously and at the same time to stay completely unpunished!
Halloween Costumes
The main thing that you should remember while choosing the costume for Halloween is a principle: «The more terrible, the better». You can buy a costume in fun shops or you can improvise it yourself.
Here are some of the most common, Halloween characters: Vampire, Witch, Executioner, Koshchei the Deathless, Baba-Yaga, Skeleton, Mummy, Corpse, Zombies, Bride of the vampire, Black Cat, Gremlin, Pirate, Spider, Brownie, Demon, Vampire, Freddy Krueger, Jack Ripper, Fantomas, Alien, Clown, Nurse, also the images of stars and heroes, and even Adult costumes.
Halloween History
Halloween comes from the ancient Celtic festival Samhain.
The Celts, who lived 2000 years ago in Ireland, Britain and Northern France, celebrated the New Year on the 1st of November. This day signifies the end of the harvest season and the opening of a new season: cold and dark, associated with the extinction of life – death.
The Celts believed that the pre-night boundary that separates the real world from the world of dead was diluted. On the night of 31 of October to the 1st of November they celebrated Samhain – the day when the spirits of dead returned to the Earth.
Spirits, according to Celtic legends brought misery, destroyed crops and harvest. But besides the trouble that they brought with them they were also doing useful things: helping Druids, the Celtic priests, to make future predictions.
For Samhain celebration, Druids constructed a gigantic saint bonfire and people surrounded it for bringing sacrifice in honor of the gods and future prediction.
During the celebrations Celts wore scary dresses, such as animal skins and heads, hoping to horrify otherworldly visitors.
When the celebration ended, Celts lit their home hearths. This ritual was supposed to protect them from the evils during winter.
In 43 AD, the Romans conquered most of the Celtic lands. As a result, during the 400-years intervention Samhain was united with two Roman holidays: Feralia and Pomona (Pomona). Feralia, celebrated at the end of October, was devoted to death. The second is Pomona, which was celebrated in honor of Pomona – goddess of trees and fruits. The symbol of Pomona is an apple, that came to the present days and is involved in the modern Halloween Costumes.
The influence of Christianity spread in the Celtic lands in 800ths. Pope Boniface IV approved the 1st of November as All Saints Day trying to draw the British attention away from the pagan customs. Later, the 2nd of November became a day of Souls, in honor of dead people.
