Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: HALLOWEEN |
HALLOWEENNoun1. The evening preceding Allhallows or All Saints' Day. |
Date "HALLOWEEN" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1831. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Literature | Halloween (October 31st), according to Scotch superstition, is the time when witches, devils, fairies, and other imps of earth and air hold annual holiday. (See Halloween, a poem by Robert Burns.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Halloween or Hallowe'en is a holiday celebrated in much of the Western world on the night of October 31, the night before All Saints Day (Nov. 1), hence its alternative name as All Saints Eve or All Hallows' Eve. Long surviving in Ireland, it was brought to the United States by Irish emigrants in the 19th century.
- Alternate meaning: Halloween (movie)
Symbols
Halloween is a holiday that is based around embracing scary things, particularly those involving death, the undead, "evil" magic, and mythical monsters. It is a liminal or threshold occasion, when the distinctions between the daylight world of reason and the spectral nightworld are blurred.
Commonly-associated Halloween "characters" include ghosts, witches, black cats, goblins, banshees, zombies, and demons, as well as certain literary figures such as Dracula and Frankenstein's monster.
Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween. There are also elements of the autumn season reflected in symbols of Halloween, such as pumpkins and scarecrows.
Jack O'Lantern
The jack o'lantern is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. In Britain and Ireland, a turnip was, and sometimes still is, used but emigrants to America quickly adopted the pumpkin since it is much easier to carve. Families that celebrate Halloween will carve a pumpkin into a scary or comical face, and place a candle inside the hollowed out shell, creating a crude lantern. This is then placed on the home's doorstep on Halloween night in order to scare evil spirits away.
Trick or Treating
The main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating, or guising, in which children dress up in costume disguises, and go door-to-door in their neighbourhood, ringing the bell and yelling "trick or treat!" or "Halloween apples!" The occupant of the house then gives the child some small candies, miniature chocolate bars or other individually wrapped treats. Children can often accumulate quite a lot of treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases or shopping bags.
Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as vampires, ghosts, witches, and devils. In recent years however, more contemporary costume ideas have also become popular, such as dressing up as a character from a popular TV show or movie. It's not uncommon for Halloween participants to celebrate by wearing costumes related to a specific theme or time. In 2001, after the September 11 Attacks, for example, costumes of firefighters, police officers, and US military personnel became popular amongst children.
Trick or Treating usually ends when a child enters his or her teenage years. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween with costume parties or other social get-togethers.
Parties
There are several traditional games associated with Halloween parties. The most common is bobbing for apples, in which a tub or a large basin is filled with water in which appless float. The participants must remove an apple from the basin using only their mouths. Naturally everyone gets wet. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings. These must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very sticky face.Another game, Púicíní (pronounced "pook-eeny"), a form of "Blindfold", is played in Ireland. A blindfolded person was seated in front of a table on which are placed several saucers. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then choses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the player will die during the next year. A saucer containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc.
Baking
A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking, or, more often nowadays, the purchase of a barm brack (Ir. "báirín breac"). This is a light fruit cake into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love over the following year.
History
Although modern Halloween is a secular holiday, it evolved from the pagan Celtic season of Samhain, which was Christianized as the feast of All Saints.
Celtic observation of Samhain
Its earliest roots are found in the Druidic holiday of death which took place each year on October 31, in the season of Samhain. After the crops were harvested, Druids in Ireland and Britain would light fires and offer sacrifices of crops and animals. As they danced around the fires, the season of the sun passed and the season of darkness would begin. When the morning of November 1 arrived, the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family who would then take them home to start new cooking fires. These fires were believed to keep the homes warm and free from evil spirits, as it was considered a time of year when the veils were thin between worlds. A three-day festival called Samhain (pronounced "sow-inn") followed. In Ireland it was believed to be the night on which the invisible "gates" between this world and the Other World were opened and free movement between both worlds was possible. In the Other World lived the immortal "Sidhe" (pronounced "shee"), the female members of whom were called beán sidhe or banshees.Bonfires played a large part in the festivities and hundreds of fires are lit each year in Ireland on Hallowe'en night. Villagers cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon the flames. The word "bonfire" is thought to derive from these "bone fires." With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit their hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together.
Like most Celtic festivals, it was celebrated on a number of levels. Materially speaking it was the time for gathering in food for the long winter months ahead, bringing people and their livestock in to their winter quarters. To be alone and missing at this dangerous time was to expose yourself and your spirit to the perils of imminent winter. In present times the importance of this part of the festival has diminished for most people. From the point of view of a tribal people for whom a bad season meant facing a long winter of famine in which many would not survive to the spring, it was paramount.
From an astrological perspective, the rising of Pleiades, the winter stars, heralds the supremacy of night over day, the dark half ruled by the realms of the moon.
In the three days preceding the Samhain month the Sun God, Lugh, maimed at Lughnassadh, dies by the hand of his Tanist (his other self), the Lord of Misrule. Lugh traverses the boundaries of the worlds on the first day of Samhain. His Tanist is a miser and though he shines brightly in the winter skies he gives no warmth and does not temper the breath of the Crone, Cailleach Bheare, the north wind. In this may be discerned the ageless battle between the light and dark and the cyclic nature of life and the seasons.
Christian views
For many Christians, this was the most evil time of the year. Modern Christian writers have conjured up a Druidical belief that on the eve of this festival a 'Samhain, lord of death" (a modern invention), called together the wicked spirits that within the past 12 months had been condemned to inhabit the bodies of animals (a most un-Celtic transmigration of souls). During the night the great shield of Skathach was lowered, allowing the barriers between the worlds to fade and the forces of evil to invade the realms of order, the material world conjoining with the world of the dead. At this time ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, black cats, fairies and demons of all kinds roamed amongst the living. The dead could return to the places where they had lived and food and entertainment were provided to exorcize them. If food and shelter were not provided, these spirits would cast spells and cause havoc towards those failing to fulfill their requests.It was the time to placate the supernatural powers controlling the processes of nature. In addition, Halloween was thought to be the most favorable time for divinations concerning marriage, luck, health and death. It was the only day on which Christians imagined that the help of the devil was invoked for such purposes.
Christianizing the Celtic Samhain
When Christianity eventually reached Ireland in 432 (and later the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England), conversion began among the local people, including Christianization of the old Celtic traditions. Pope Gregory III (731-741) consecrated a chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter to all the saints and fixed the anniversary, not by chance, for 1 November. In 835, Pope Gregory IV extended the celebration for all the martyrs (later all saints) on November 1 to include all the churches. The Christian establishment successful co-opted the Samhain season by shifting the emphasis. When November 1 became the new date for the feast of All Saints, all the Saints and Martyrs being called upon to sanctify the season, the pagan Celtic Samhain became merely 'Hallows Eve' It turned into a vigil of preparation for the morrow, which was made a day of obligation, when Christians were obliged to attend mass.Even later, in the 11th century, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor all the dead: all the Christian souls in the half-world of Purgatory. Catholic doctrine most clearly reveals the liminal or threshold connection between the two worlds: "that the souls which, on departing from the body, are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific Vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, almsdeeds and especially by the sacrifice of the Mass." (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910: 'All Soul's Day').
All Soul's Day was accepted and Christianized by Odilo (died 1048) in the Cluniac monasteries, and its observance spread through the Celtic north before it was introduced into Italy.
Hallowe'en customs pre 1900
Observance of Halloween faded in the South of England from the 17th century onwards, being replaced by the commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5. However it remained popular in Scotland and the North of England. It is only in the last decade that it has become popular in the South of England again, although in an entirely Americanised version.The custom survives most accurately in Ireland, where the last Monday of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week for mid-term, commonly called the Hallowe'en Break. As a result Ireland is the only country where children never have school on Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honoured fashion.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have evolved from the European custom called souling, similar to the wassailing customs associated with Yuletide. On November 2, All Souls Day, Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" - square pieces of bread with currants. Beggars would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits at the Samhain. See Puck (mythology).
In Celtic parts of western Brittany. Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou. Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld.
Christianizing the Lemuria
May 13 was the culmination of the Roman Feast of the Lemures, in which the restless wandering spirits of the dead were propitiated with offerings and incantations.. Pope Boniface IV at the Feast of the Lemures, 13 May, either in 609 or 610 (the day being considered more significant than the year), reconsecrated the Pantheon in Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs, ordering an anniversary. The feast was to honor all the saints, 'known or unknown' and is taken as the early version of All Saints.
Religious Viewpoints
Some fundamentalist Christian groups consider Halloween a Pagan holiday because of these early Pagan origins, and may refer to it as "The most evil day of the year", refusing to allow their children to participate. Among these groups it is believed to have developed Satanic influences, as have many other Pagan practices. It used to be that on Halloween, schools would give children boxes to collect pennies in for UNICEF, but after these fundamentalist Christians complained that the schools were endorsing a Pagan religion, most schools stopped distributing such boxes. Other Christians continue to connect this holiday with All Saints Day. Modern Christian churches commonly offer a "fall festival" or harvest-themed alternative to Halloween celebrations.
On this day, Neopagans celebrate the sabbat of Samhain. Many Neopagans also take part in secular Halloween activities.
See also: Day of the Dead
External links
- Halloween:The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallow by Jack Santino
- A Selected Bibliography on Halloween and Related Topics, American Folklife Center
- Halloween images
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Halloween."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Halloween films are a series of horror movies considered among the most important and influential to the genre.The first film, Halloween, was written and directed by John Carpenter and was released in 1978, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance. In the movie, six-year-old Michael Myers brutally kills his older sister in 1963 and is locked in a mental institution. Fifteen years later, he escapes and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois to continue his rampage.
Shot on a budget of $300,000, it was the highest grossing independent film ever, until Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released in 1988, and then The Blair Witch Project in 1999.
Halloween is generally considered the first of a long line of modern-day "slasher" movies, though some film scholars (and cult movie fans) say the credit for this goes to either Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho or Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nonetheless, this movie originated a great many of the clichés seen in countless low-budget "splatter" films of the 1980s and 1990s. (First-time viewers of Halloween may be surprised by the fact that compared to its many imitators and competitors, the original film actually has very few explicitly violent scenes.)
Deeper meaning has been read into this movie by some film critics, including the idea that everyone who dies in the film is sexually promiscuous, while the "innocent" (chaste) heroine survives. Carpenter has been quoted as saying that inclusion of this sort of morality into the story was entirely unintentional, and he did not mean for the movie to be seen as a form of "punishment" for sinners who indulge in sex and drug use. And yet the parallel between a character's moral strengths and their likelihood of not getting killed has become a standard slasher movie trope. Critic Roger Ebert has taken to calling this genre the "Dead Teenager Movie", the principal cliché of which is that the only teenager to survive is always the virginal girl who declines all of the vices (pot smoking, etc.) indulged in by those who end up skewered. And some other films in this genre have explored the sexual morality question from the other angle, drawing metaphorical parallels between sexual repression and the acts of the killer (as in William Lustig's Maniac).
Halloween’s success has led to a number of sequels, beginning with 1981's Halloween II, also written by Carpenter and directed by Rick Rosenthal. Carpenter was extremely displeased with it, describing it as "about as scary as an episode of Quincy" and, reportedly, reshooting many scenes himself.
A third film in the series, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was released in 1982. Whereas the first sequel had used similar plot themes and characters to the original, Halloween III was an entirely unrelated film, and was met with powerful derision by both critics and fans of the franchise.
Those left wanting more were rewarded, as a further five films based on the original's themes were made, the most recent being Halloween: Resurrection (2002). It must be noted that many of the original's fans are disenchanted by the seemingly endless spate of sequels, which are perceived as cynically-motivated moneymakers, rather than quality horror films made by dedicated filmmakers with a love for the originals and a genuine artistic vision.
See also: Halloween, the holiday for which the movie is named.
External link
- The official website of Michael Myers
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Halloween (movie)."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Regularity of recurrence Periodicity | Rota, cycle, period, stated time, routine; days of the week; Sunday, Monday; months of the year; January; feast, fast; Christmas, Easter, New Year's day; Allhallows, Allhallowmas, All Saints' Day; All Souls', All Souls' Day; Ash Wednesday, bicentennial, birthday, bissextile, Candlemas, Dewali, groundhog day, Halloween, Hallowmas, Lady day, leap year, Midsummer day, Muharram, woodchuck day, St. Swithin's day, natal day; yearbook; yuletide. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: HALLOWEEN |
| English words defined with "HALLOWEEN": Allhallow eve, antic ♦ confront, costume ♦ dress up ♦ fantastic, fantastical ♦ grotesque ♦ Hallowe'en ♦ trick or treat. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "HALLOWEEN": Career Limiting Move, CLM ♦ Halloween Documents ♦ Mar's Year, Microsoft. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "HALLOWEEN" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. German (halloween). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I bet they're not making Dawson's Creek go supernatural for Halloween. (Grosse Pointe; writing credit: Amy Engelberg; Wendy Engelberg) You'd do that for 15, we already determined that last Halloween. (Caroline in the City; writing credit: Angela Carneiro) Soon after, Halloween became another word for mayhem (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers; writing credit: Debra Hill; John Carpenter) I'm surprised I didn't guess it was you. This Halloween stunt stinks of Ethan Rayne (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; writing credit: Doreen Spicer) This night my mind was filled with Halloween. There was to be a pageant representing our county's agricultural products (To Kill a Mockingbird; writing credit: Harper Lee; Horton Foote) | |
Lyrics | No Halloween (I Just Called to Say I Love You; performing artist: Stevie Wonder) | |
Clever | You're trailer trash when the Halloween pumpkin on your porch has more teeth than your spouse. (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Familia unida que espera la llegada de Halloween (1971) Betty Boop's Halloween Party (1933) Halloween (1931) The Bum's Halloween (1913) | |
Song Titles | It Could Only Happen On Halloween (performing artist: Gregory's Funhouse) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books | |||
Periodicals |
| ||
Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
| ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Who says that hydrographers are abnormal? Halloween on the PEIRCE. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection. |  | Laura Morse working on the Big Eyes searching for marine mammals on Halloween. On the NOAA Ship McARTHUR conducting STAR 2000 operations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Credit: Sailing for Science - the NOAA Fleet Then and Now. |
 | U.S. American National Red Cross : Celebrants at the Halloween party. [Paris, France]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | If dreams came true. Willie's halloween mask would accomplish its purpose. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | I ain't skeered, but I knows what I'm seeing -- and it's no Halloween joke, either. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Halloween party at Shafter Camp for migrant agricultural workers. California. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | The children crowd and push to reach refreshments at Halloween party. Shafter migrant Camp, California. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Children at Halloween party, waiting for signal to come for refreshments. Shafter migrant camp, California. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Halloween and the Minnesota snowball. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Celebrate Halloween with an evening of jazz & blues, starring Bea Smith and Melody Jones, renowned musicians and community activists. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |  |
| "Halloween coffee" by Kd Kelly Commentary: "Coffee cup display decorated for halloween <br> <br>(if you use this i'd love to hear from you -- thanks)." | "Halloween pumpkin" by Feike Kloostra Commentary: "A close up of a Halloween pumpkin toy." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. | |
| Play | Caption |
 | Boo; ghost; scare; scary; sneak up; sneaked up; surprise; surprising; sneaking up; ghoul; phantom; poltergeist; Halloween. |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Speaker | Phrase(s) |
Phyllis Diller | Oh, please. Shaggy thing. I've seen Halloween outfits that cost more. So they wanted to do it again, and I said let me set up one. So I was nude on a bear rug like babies. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "HALLOWEEN" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "HALLOWEEN" is used about 92 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 92 | 34,282 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "HALLOWEEN": halloween Documents. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "HALLOWEEN": pre-halloween. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
halloween | 5,918 | halloween recipe | 114 |
halloween costume | 3,458 | halloween fog | 110 |
halloween decoration | 1,780 | halloween craft | 107 |
halloween mask | 1,599 | halloween music | 104 |
halloween make up | 1,168 | halloween invitation | 95 |
child halloween costume | 1,079 | halloween clip art | 87 |
halloween party | 982 | halloween party idea | 79 |
halloween movie | 675 | halloween sound | 76 |
halloween prop | 333 | halloween treat | 69 |
halloween clipart | 221 | halloween wedding | 68 |
9 halloween | 195 | sexy halloween costume | 67 |
adult halloween costume | 165 | halloween h20 | 65 |
halloween candy | 163 | halloween horror night | 65 |
halloween game | 158 | halloween wallpaper | 63 |
halloween picture | 155 | halloween haunted house | 59 |
halloween michael myers | 142 | baby halloween costume | 58 |
halloween resurrection | 131 | kid halloween costume | 57 |
halloween store | 124 | halloween graphic | 57 |
halloween history | 123 | halloween supply | 53 |
halloween costume idea | 117 | halloween background | 50 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "HALLOWEEN"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Czech | předveèer svátku všech svatých. (various references) | |
German | halloween, tag vor allerheiligen. (various references) | |
Greek | παραμονή των άγιων πάντων, 31 οκτώβρη. (various references) | |
Italian | vigilia d'ognissanti. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | ハロー効果 (halo effect, halogen). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ハロウィーン . (various references) | |
Norwegian | Allehelgensaften. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | alloweenhay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | dia das bruxas. (various references) | |
Russian | канун дня всех святых (Hallowe'en). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | dečji praznik. (various references) | |
Spanish | Víspera de Todos los Santos (hallowe'en). (various references) | |
Swedish | all helgona helgen. (various references) | |
Turkish | cadılar bayramı. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | переддень дня усіх святих (hallow-e'en). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"HALLOWEEN" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Hailsowen, hallloween, hallowee, Halloweening, hallowen, haloween, halowen, Helloween, hollowen. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-e-e-h-l-l-n-o-w" | |
-3 letters: enhalo, hallow. | |
-4 letters: allee, allow, alone, anele, anole, hallo, haole, hello, holla, leone, llano, newel, whale, wheal, wheel, wheen, whole. | |
-5 letters: aeon, alee, aloe, alow, anew, awee, awol, elan, enol, enow, haen, hale, hall, halo, heal, heel, hell, helo, hewn, hole, hone, howe, howl, hwan, lane, lawn, leal, lean, leno, loan, lone, lowe. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-e-e-h-l-l-n-o-w" | |
+4 letters: shallownesses. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Sounds | 9. Quotations: Spoken 10. Usage Frequency 11. Expressions 12. Expressions: Internet | 13. Translations: Modern 14. Derivations 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
