《英语流行话题阅读:语境识词4500》40 Customs of Halloween

　　Unit 40

Customs of Halloween

Halloween is an annual celebration. How did this peculiar 1 custom originate?

The word "Halloween" comes from All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hallows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints.

It was believed that during the period from Oct. 31 through to Nov. 1, the boundaries between our world and the world of the dead were weakened, allowing spirits of the recently dead to cross over and hunt the living. In order to make themselves and their homes less appealing to these spirits, the ancient Celts put out fire in their homes to make them cold and undesirable 2, and built huge scared bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to Gods. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortune. When the celebration was over, they relit their hearth 4 fires from the sacred bonfires to help protect them during the coming winter. They also dressed up in odd costumes and parade through their villages to scare off any recently departed souls who might be searching for bodies to inhabit.

How did the custom of "trick-or-treat" come into being? On Nov. 2, early Christians 5 would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes", made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars received, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors 6. The prayers, it was believed, could accelerate a soul's passage to heaven. The practice, once referred to as "going-a-souling" was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given apples, buns or money. During the Pioneer days of the American West, the housewives would give the children candy to keep from being tricked. The children would shout "Trick or Treat!"

The Jack 7-o'-lantern custom comes from Irish folklore 8. Jack, a notorious drunkard, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt 3 him with alcohol again, he would let him down the tree. After Jack died, he was denied entrance to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a hollowed-out turnips 9, with an ember inside, to light his way through the darkness. Originally, the Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns". But when immigrants came to America, they found pumpkins 11 were far more plentiful 12 and easier to carve out than turnips. So the jack-o'-lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin 10, lit with an ember.