• Trick-or-treating and guising

? ??? ??Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as?candy?or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" implies a "threat" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given.The practice is said to have roots in the medieval practice of?mumming, which is closely related to?souling.John Pymm wrote that "many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church."These?feast days?included All Hallows' Eve, Christmas,?Twelfth Night?and?Shrove Tuesday.Mumming practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe,involved masked persons in?fancy dress?who "paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence".

? ??? ??In England, from the medieval period,?up until the 1930s,people practiced the Christian custom of souling on Halloween, which involved groups of soulers, both Protestant and Catholic,going from?parish?to parish, begging the rich for soul cakes, in exchange for?praying?for the souls of the givers and their friends.In the Philippines, the practice of souling is called?Pangangaluwa?and is practiced on All Hallow's Eve among children in rural areas.People drape themselves in white cloths to represent souls and then visit houses, where they sing in return for prayers and sweets.

? ??? ??In Scotland and Ireland,?guising?– children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a traditional Halloween custom.It is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money.?In Ireland, the most popular phrase for kids to shout (until the 2000s) was "Help the Halloween Party".The practice of guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in?Kingston, Ontario, Canada reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.

? ??? ??American historian and author?Ruth Edna Kelley?of?Massachusetts?wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US;?The Book of Hallowe'en?(1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America".?In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries".

? ??? ??While the first reference to "guising" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.The earliest known use in print of the term "trick or treat" appears in 1927, in the?Blackie Herald, of?Alberta, Canada.

? ??? ??The thousands of?Halloween postcards?produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but not trick-or-treating.Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice in North America until the 1930s, with the first US appearances of the term in 1934,and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.

? ??? ??A popular variant of trick-or-treating, known as trunk-or-treating (or Halloween tailgating), occurs when "children are offered treats from the trunks of cars parked in a church parking lot", or sometimes, a school parking lot.In a trunk-or-treat event, the?trunk?(boot) of each automobile is decorated with a certain theme,?such as those of children's literature, movies,?scripture, and?job roles. Trunk-or-treating has grown in popularity due to its perception as being more safe than going door to door, a point that resonates well with parents, as well as the fact that it "solves the rural conundrum in which homes [are] built a half-mile apart".

• Costumes

? ??? ??Halloween costumes are traditionally modeled after supernatural figures such as?vampires, monsters,?ghosts,?skeletons,?witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic?archetypes?such as?ninjas?and?princesses.

? ? ? ? Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Scotland and Ireland at Halloween by the late 19th century.A Scottish term, the tradition is called "guising" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children.?In Ireland the masks are known as 'false faces'.Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children, and when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in Canada and the US in the 1920s and 1930s.

? ??? ??Eddie J. Smith, in his book?Halloween, Hallowed is Thy Name, offers a religious perspective to the wearing of costumes on All Hallows' Eve, suggesting that by dressing up as creatures "who at one time caused us to fear and tremble", people are able to poke fun at?Satan?"whose kingdom has been plundered by our Saviour". Images of skeletons and the dead are traditional decorations used as?memento mori.

? ??? ??"Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" is a fundraising program to support?UNICEF,a United Nations Programme that provides humanitarian aid to children in developing countries. Started as a local event in a?Northeast Philadelphia?neighborhood in 1950 and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of Small boxes by schools (or in modern times, corporate sponsors like?Hallmark, at their licensed stores) to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit Small-change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $118?million for UNICEF since its inception. In Canada, in 2006, UNICEF decided to discontinue their Halloween collection boxes, citing safety and administrative concerns; after consultation with schools, they instead redesigned the program.

? ??? ??Good Housekeeping?magazine published, in October 2020, fifteen categories of potentially offensive Halloween costumes that one might endeavor to avoid. Their list consisted of a?Holocaust victim, anything involving?blackface,?transphobic?costumes, the?COVID-19 pandemic,?body shaming?and?objectifying?costumes,?cultural stereotypes, a?terrorist,?Zombie?versions of recently deceased celebrities, an?eating disorder,?animal cruelty, a?mentally ill?person,?sexual harasSment, a?homeless?person, a national tragedy, and the?Black Lives Matter?movement. During the same month,?Pinterest?began flagging search terms such as "Indian costume", as well as "Day of the Dead costume", "gypsy costume", or "geisha costume" with a notice on?cultural appropriation.

• Pet costumes

? ??? ??According to a 2018 report from the?National Retail Federation, 30 million Americans will spend an estimated $480 million on Halloween costumes for their pets in 2018. This is up from an estimated $200 million in 2010. The most popular costumes for pets are the pumpkin, followed by the?hot dog, and the?bumble bee?in third place.

• Games and other activities

? ??? ??There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween. Some of these games originated as?divination?rituals or ways of foretelling one's future, especially regarding death, marriage and children. During the?Middle Ages, these rituals were done by a "rare few" in rural communities as they were considered to be "deadly serious" practices.In recent centuries, these divination games have been "a common feature of the household festivities" in Ireland and Britain.?They often involve apples and hazelnuts. In?Celtic mythology,?apples?were strongly associated with the?Otherworld?and?immortality, while?hazelnuts?were associated with divine wisdom.Some also suggest that they derive from Roman practices in celebration of?Pomona.

? ? ? ? The following activities were a common feature of Halloween in Ireland and Britain during the 17th–20th centuries. Some have become more widespread and continue to be popular today. One common game is?apple bobbing?or dunking (which may be called "dooking" in Scotland) in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use only their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drive the fork into an apple. 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 that inevitably leads to a sticky face. Another once-popular game involves hanging a Small wooden rod from the ceiling at head height, with a lit candle on one end and an apple hanging from the other. The rod is spun round and everyone takes turns to try to catch the apple with their teeth.

? ? ? ??Several of the traditional activities from Ireland and Britain involve foretelling one's future partner or spouse. An apple would be peeled in one long strip, then the peel tossed over the shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name.Two hazelnuts would be roasted near a fire; one named for the person roasting them and the other for the person they desire. If the nuts jump away from the heat, it is a bad sign, but if the nuts roast quietly it foretells a good match.A salty oatmeal?bannock?would be baked; the person would eat it in three bites and then go to bed in silence without anything to drink. This is said to result in a dream in which their future spouse offers them a drink to quench their thirst.Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and?gazed into a mirror?on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror.However, if they were destined to die before marriage, a?skull?would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late 19th century and early 20th century.

? ??? ??In Ireland and Scotland, items would be hidden in food?– usually a cake,?barmbrack,?cranachan,?champ?or?colcannon?– and portions of it served out at random. A person's future would be foretold by the item they happened to find; for example, a ring meant marriage and a coin meant wealth.

? ??? ??Up until the 19th century, the Halloween bonfires were also used for divination in parts of Scotland, Wales and Brittany. When the fire died down, a ring of stones would be laid in the ashes, one for each person. In the morning, if any stone was mislaid it was said that the person it represented would not live out the year.

? ??? ??Telling?ghost stories, listening to Halloween-themed songs and watching horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of television series and?Halloween-themed specials?(with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before Halloween, while new horror films are often released before Halloween to take advantage of the holiday.

• Haunted attractions

? ? ? ? Haunted attractions are entertainment venues designed to thrill and scare patrons. Most attractions are seasonal Halloween businesses that may include?haunted houses,?corn mazes, and?hayrides, and the level of sophistication of the effects has risen as the industry has grown.

? ??? ??The first recorded purpose-built haunted attraction was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in 1915 in?Liphook, England. This attraction actually most closely resembles a carnival fun house, powered by steam.The House still exists, in the?Hollycombe Steam Collection.

? ??? ??It was during the 1930s, about the same time as?trick-or-treating, that Halloween-themed haunted houses first began to appear in America. It was in the late 1950s that haunted houses as a major attraction began to appear, focusing first on California. Sponsored by the Children's Health Home Junior Auxiliary, the San Mateo Haunted House opened in 1957. The San Bernardino Assistance League Haunted House opened in 1958. Home haunts began appearing across the country during 1962 and 1963. In 1964, the San Manteo Haunted House opened, as well as the Children's Museum Haunted House in Indianapolis.

? ??? ??The haunted house as an American cultural icon can be attributed to the opening of the?Haunted Mansion?in?Disneyland?on 12 August 1969.Knott's Berry Farm?began hosting its own Halloween night attraction,?Knott's Scary Farm, which opened in 1973.Evangelical Christians adopted a form of these attractions by opening one of the first "hell houses" in 1972.

????????The first Halloween haunted house run by a nonprofit organization was produced in 1970 by the Sycamore-Deer Park?Jaycees?in?Clifton, Ohio. It was cosponsored by?WSAI, an AM radio station broadcasting out of?Cincinnati, Ohio. It was last produced in 1982.Other Jaycees followed suit with their own versions after the success of the Ohio house. The?March of Dimes?copyrighted a "Mini haunted house for the March of Dimes" in 1976 and began fundraising through their local chapters by conducting haunted houses soon after. Although they apparently quit supporting this type of event nationally sometime in the 1980s, some March of Dimes haunted houses have persisted until today.

? ??? ??On the evening of 11 May 1984, in Jackson Township, New Jersey, the?Haunted Castle (Six Flags Great Adventure)?caught fire. As a result of the fire, eight teenagers perished.The backlash to the tragedy was a tightening of regulations relating to safety, building codes and the frequency of inspections of attractions nationwide. The Smaller venues, especially the nonprofit attractions, were unable to compete financially, and the better funded commercial enterprises filled the vacuum.Facilities that were once able to avoid regulation because they were considered to be temporary installations now had to adhere to the stricter codes required of permanent attractions.

? ??? ??In the late 1980s and early 1990s, theme parks entered the business seriously.?Six Flags Fright Fest?began in 1986 and?Universal Studios Florida?began?Halloween Horror Nights?in 1991.?Knott's Scary Farm?experienced a surge in attendance in the 1990s as a result of America's obsession with Halloween as a cultural event. Theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday.?Universal Studios Singapore?and?Universal Studios Japan?both participate, while Disney now mounts?Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party?events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as in the United States.The theme park haunts are by far the largest, both in scale and attendance.

• Food

? ??? ??On All Hallows' Eve, many Western Christian denominations encourage?abstinence from meat, giving rise to a variety of?vegetarian?foods associated with this day.[202]

? ??? ??Because in the?Northern Hemisphere?Halloween comes in the wake of the yearly apple harvest,?candy apples?(known as toffee apples outside North America),?caramel?apples or taffy apples are common Halloween treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.

? ??? ??At one time, candy apples were commonly given to trick-or-treating children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and?razor blades in the apples?in the United States.[203]?While there is evidence of such incidents,[204]?relative to the degree of reporting of such cases, actual cases involving malicious acts are extremely rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.

? ??? ??One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays, the purchase) of a?barmbrack?(Irish:?báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a plain ring, a coin, and other charms are placed before baking.[206]?It is considered fortunate to be the lucky one who finds it.[206]?It has also been said that those who get a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of?king cake?at the festival of?Epiphany.

• Christian religious observances

? ? ? ? On Hallowe'en (All Hallows' Eve), in?Poland, believers were once taught to?pray?out loud as they walk through the forests in order that the souls of the dead might find comfort; in Spain, Christian priests in tiny villages toll their?church bells?in order to remind their congregants to remember the dead on All Hallows' Eve.In Ireland, and among immigrants in Canada, a custom includes the Christian practice of?abstinence, keeping All Hallows' Eve as a?meat-free day, and serving pancakes or?colcannon?instead.?In?Mexico?children make an altar to invite the return of the spirits of dead children (angelitos).

? ??? ??The?Christian Church?traditionally observed Hallowe'en through a?vigil. Worshippers prepared themselves for feasting on the following?All Saints' Day?with prayers and fasting.This?church service?is known as the?vigil of All Hallows?or the?vigil of All Saints;an initiative known as?Night of Light?seeks to further spread the?vigil of All Hallows?throughout?Christendom.After the service, "suitable festivities and entertainments" often follow, as well as a visit to the graveyard or cemetery, where flowers and candles are often placed in preparation for?All Hallows' Day.In?Finland, because so many people visit the cemeteries on All Hallows' Eve to light?votive candles?there, they "are known as?valomeri, or seas of light".

? ? ? ? Today, Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the?Anglican Church, some?dioceses?have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions associated with All Hallow's Eve.[218][219]?Some of these?practices?include?praying,?fasting?and attending?worship services.[1][2][3]

? ??? ??O LORD our God, increase, we pray thee, and multiply upon us the gifts of thy grace: that we, who do prevent the glorious festival of all thy Saints, may of thee be enabled joyfully to follow them in all virtuous and godly living. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. —Collect?of the vigil of All Saints,?The Anglican Breviary[220]

? ? ? ? Other?Protestant Christians?also celebrate All Hallows' Eve as?Reformation Day, a day to remember the?Protestant Reformation, alongside All Hallow's Eve or independently from it.[221]?This is because?Martin Luther?is said to have nailed his?Ninety-five Theses?to?All Saints' Church in Wittenberg?on All Hallows' Eve.[222]?Often, "Harvest Festivals" or "Reformation Festivals" are held on All Hallows' Eve, in which children dress up as?Bible characters?or?Reformers.[223]?In addition to distributing candy to children who are trick-or-treating on Hallowe'en, many Christians also provide?gospel tracts?to them. One organization, the?American Tract Society, stated that around 3 million gospel tracts are ordered from them alone for Hallowe'en celebrations.[224]?Others order Halloween-themed?Scripture Candy?to pass out to children on this day.[225][226]

? ? ? ? Some Christians feel concerned about the modern celebration of Halloween because they feel it trivializes?– or celebrates?–?paganiSm, the?occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs.[227]?Father?Gabriele Amorth, an?exorcist?in Rome, has said, "if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that."[228]?In more recent years, the?Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston?has organized a "Saint Fest" on Halloween.[229]?Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage.[230]?Christian minister Sam Portaro wrote that Halloween is about using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death".[231]

? ??? ??In the?Roman Catholic Church, Halloween's Christian connection is acknowledged, and Halloween celebrations are common in many?Catholic parochial schools.[232][233]?Many?fundamentalist?and?evangelical?churches use "Hell houses" and comic-style?tracts?in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for?evangeliSm.[234]?Others consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith due to its putative origins in the?Festival of the Dead?celebration.[235]?Indeed, even though?Eastern Orthodox?Christians observe All Hallows' Day on the First Sunday after?Pentecost, The Eastern Orthodox Church recommends the observance of?Vespers?or a?Paraklesis?on the Western observance of All Hallows' Eve, out of the pastoral need to provide an alternative to popular celebrations.[236]

• Around the world

? ? ? ? The traditions and importance of Halloween vary greatly among countries that observe it. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include children dressing up in costume going "guising", holding parties, while other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays.In Brittany children would play practical jokes by setting candles inside skulls in graveyards to frighten visitors.?Mass transatlantic immigration in the 19th century popularized Halloween in North America, and celebration in the United States and Canada has had a significant impact on how the event is observed in other nations.This larger North American influence, particularly in iconic and commercial elements, has extended to places such as Ecuador,?Chile,Australia,New Zealand,(most)?continental Europe,?Finland,Japan, and other parts of East Asia.In the?Philippines, during Halloween, Filipinos return to their hometowns and purchase candles and flowers, in preparation for the following?All Saints Day?(Araw ng mga Patay) on 1 November and?All Souls Day?– though it falls on 2 November, most of them observe it on the day before.?In Mexico and Latin America in general, it is referred to as "Día de Muertos", which translates in English to "Day of the dead". Most of the people from Latin America construct altars in their homes to honor their deceased relatives and they decorate them with flowers, candies, and other offerings.

參考內(nèi)容：

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

出處：維基百科