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Halloween Traditions Around The World

20 strange and scary Halloween traditions.

Celebrating Halloween and bidding adieu to this fascinating jamboree is the key topic today. Be it the celebration of Christmas or the New Year different people around the world has their own way of celebration. Before leaving this celebration as memory and waiting for the next one let’s have a quick look into Halloween traditions of different countries, different ways, and different people.

1. CARVING HALLOWEEN JACK-O’-LANTERNS

JACK-O'-LANTERNS
JACK-O’-LANTERNS

As the name depicts it is related to the man named Jack who was punished to wander with a hollow pumpkin carrying a lump of burning coal inside.


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2. GOING TRICK-OR-TREATING, THE AMERICAN WAY

A calavera

 They say, “Me da mi calaverita?” Which means, “Can you give me my little skull?”

calaverita is a small skull made of sugar or chocolate.

Halloween Traditions Around The World

3. MUNCHING ON CANDY CORN

Candy corn
Candy corn starts as a mixture of sugar, fondant, corn syrup, vanilla flavor, and marshmallow creme.

Actually autumnal candy because of corns, since it is linked with harvest time, candy corn became Halloween-specific.

Halloween dessert

Halloween Dessert Nachos

CREDIT: MATTHEW CLARK

This colorful Halloween dessert is built on a bed of sliced apples, drizzled with caramel, and topped with all your favorite treats, like candy corn and candy eyes. Make this with leftover Halloween candy—if there’s any left!

4. GORGING ON CANDY

halloween-candy

Candies are wrapped than other eatables that are given as gifts on Halloween, so it is a safe eatable, they say so.

5. SPOTTING BATS

SPOTTING BATS HALLOWEEN

There are a lot of superstitions built around the idea that bats were the harbingers of death thus scaring Halloween.

6. EATING CANDY APPLES

Candy apples Halloween

Somewhere after the 1950s, candy apples were given out at Halloween. An apple is a harvest season fruit.

 But the first mention of candy apples being given out at Halloween didn’t occur until the 1950s.

Halloween Traditions Around The World

7. LIGHTING CANDLES AND BONFIRES

Open flames were used to enlighten souls seeking the afterlife.

8. Day of the Dead Mexican

It is a very famous Halloween tradition Mexican day of the dead feat remembering the passed ones.

Day of the Dead (Dia De Los Muertos) is a two day holiday that reunites the living and dead. Families create ofrendas (Offerings) to honor their departed family members that have passed. These altars are decorated with bright yellow marigold flowers, photos of the departed, and the favorite foods and drinks of the one being honored. The offerings are believed to encourage visits from the land of the dead as the departed souls hear their prayers, smell their foods and join in the celebrations!

9. PLAYING PRANKS

Scottish and Irish immigrants came to America with them, they bought many traditions like celebrating Mischief Night as part of Halloween highly enjoyed by candy-fueled pranksters.

10. DECORATING WITH BLACK AND ORANGE

Celtic people believed that black represents the “death” of summer while orange autumn harvest season.

11. BOBBING FOR APPLES

The game is based on a roman festival Pomona, young men and women foretell their future relationships based on the game.

12. GETTING SPOOKED BY BLACK CATS

Cats are usually connected to devils or something evil, therefore we need no reason to find why cats are associated with Halloween.

13. GOING TRICK-OR-TREATING, THE SCOTTISH WAY

Dressing up as some ghost to disguise is the gist. The tradition is also known as ‘guising’ in Scotland

14. GOING TRICK-OR-TREATING, THE PAGAN WAY

trick or treat

 People would try to disguise themselves by wearing costumes to hide from the dead spirits who were said to walk among them. It is also called ‘the dead walked the earth.

Halloween Traditions Around The World

15. WEARING SCARY COSTUMES

It is a very common tradition of Halloween to scare ghosts so that they can’t recognize us.

16. SEEING GHOSTS

During the festival Samhain, Celtic people believed that during this period spirits walked the Earth

17.TengChieh Chinese

Hungry ghosts feast is a Chinese festival around Halloween.  They are believed to guide dead relatives with Bonfires and lanterns

18. Beet & Turnip Carving

turnip

Dr. Michael Carter, an English Heritage historian, said: “From carved pumpkins to trick or treating, many of the traditions associated with Halloween today come from early European folklore, rather than simply being American inventions.”

An Irish folk tale talks about a man named Jack who tried to trick the devil and then was cursed to wander with a hollow turnip having burning coal inside

19. Talking to the Dead (Commemoration of All the Departed)

 It is a Czech Republic tradition. Flowers are taken to the graves of their young ones and they also put chairs around the fire.

20. Beans of the Dead (Favedeimorti) Italian Tradition

Italians cook large bean-shaped cakes, they leave their homes open and visit the church for the dead to go for an after-life Marathon.

Pythagoreans believed that fava beans could contain the souls of the dead since they were flesh-like. Due to their black-spotted flowers and hollow stems, some believers thought the plants connected earth and Hades, providing ladders for human souls. The beans’ association with reincarnation and the soul made eating fava beans close to cannibalism.

Halloween Traditions Around The World