Halloween is a best time for children indulged in fun. In the eyes of children, it is a festival full of mystery. As the night fell, the children are all hurried to put on their colorful make-up costumes and wear various ridiculous masks on and go out for playing, as well as carried with a “Jackâ??s Lantern” .

The “Jackâ??s Lantern” looks very cute and lovely, and it could be made out as following steps: Take a pumpkin and hollowed out it, then engraved smiling eyes and a big mouth on the outside, then put a candle in and lit it, so people could able to see this naive and smiling face faraway.

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When have dressed up fully, groups of children acted as various demons and ghosts and carried with “Jack lanterns”, they ran in front of the doors of their neighbors and shouted threatened: “Trick or Treat”, “Money or Eat”. If the adults do not treat them with candies or small changes, those naughty children will keep their word: All right, No Treat, Just trick with you. They sometimes painted soaps on their door handles, and sometimes painted colors on their cats. These small pranks often made adults hilarious much. Of course, most of peoples are very happy to treat their innocent little guests. So on the eve of Halloween the children could always get a plump stomach and a full pocket back.

The most popular play on the eve of Halloween is “Biting Apples”. In the game, people will put some apples floating in the water with a big basin, and then let the children to bite at these apples without using their hands, and the winner is the first one who bit an apple successfully.

In addition, to adults Halloween is also a happy night could make the fantasies come to true. Lower Manhattan is no exception as New Yorkers turn out en masse to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. They come for the entertainment to see the parade’s main playact – paper puppets bobbing above the crowds, and to indulge in an elaborate game of dress-up.

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Everyday rules are temporarily suspended and thousands of costumed New Yorkers parade in the streets without fear of being judged. Men in hats (and little else) walk alongside kazoo-playing old ladies. No one is worried by the bizarre or weird, because at the Village Parade, Halloween is a night when anything goes.

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Anything but crime, that is. Halloween, a night of mayhem in most other U.S. cities, is peaceful in Greenwich Village. The joyous spirit of the partygoers results in a night when crime is lower than on any other night of the year. This proves, in more ways than one, that Halloween is when one’s wildest fantasies can come true for New Yorkers.

At first, let’s talking about the origin of word “Halloween”: a lot of nations on the eve of Halloween will held a celebration gathering, which also be called “All Hallow E’en”, “The Eve of All Hallows”, “Hallow e’en”, or “The eve of All Saintas’ Day “, and last evolved as a convention into “Halloween”, in Chinese we call it “the night of Halloween”. 

Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom come from? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?  

In the Medieval Ages, the central Europe had a history of demolishing heathens, but the sacrifice ceremony before the New Year’s night has never been reclined indeed, and just appeared in the form of wizard. That’s why in today’s Hallowmas, we are still familiar with witch’s brooms, black cats and curses.  

Halloween is one of the oldest holidays with origins going back thousands of years. The holiday we know as Halloween has had many influences from many cultures over the centuries. From the Roman’s Pomona Day, to the Celtic festival of Samhain, to the Christian holidays of All Saints and All Souls Days.   

Hundreds of years ago in what is now Great Britain and Northern France, lived the Celts. The Celts worshipped nature and had many gods, with the sun god as their favorite. It was “he” who commanded their work and their rest times, and who made the earth beautiful and the crops grow.  

The word itself, “Halloween,” actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, “All Hollows Day” (or “All Saints Day”), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.  

One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.  

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.  

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.  

Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.  

The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.  

 With regard to the origin of Halloween, the most referred legend viewed that Halloween was came from the ancient Western European countries before the birth of Christ, which mainly includes Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These ancient Western Europeans were also called Celtic or Druids. The date of Celtic or Druids’ New Year is on November 1, and in the New Year’s eve, young peoples in Druids were gathered in a team and worn various weird masks, carried carved radish lamps and wandered between villages. 

The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.  

Here is necessary to explain that the pumpkin lamp is a custom appeared lately, and there’s no pumpkin in ancient Western Europe. In fact, the Halloween is a ceremony that celebrated for the autumn’s harvest, and it also was said as a “ghost day”, there’s a legend said that the souls of people who dead in the that year will return to visit the world, so live peoples should let the souls returned see the scenery of their successful harvest and give them an abundant feast. So all needfires and lamps were used to scare sway the souls of ghosts, and the same time to illuminate the return road for the ghosts and guide them back.

0) The most popular game on the eve of Halloween is “Biting Apples”. In the game, people will put some apples floating in the water with a big basin, then let the children to bite at these apples without using their hands, and the winner is the first one who bite an apple successfully.  

1) Halloween is always celebrated on 31 October.

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2) Halloween is one of the oldest celebrations in the world, dating back over 2000 years to the time of the Celts who lived in Britain

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3) Halloween is correctly spelt as Hallowe’en and Halloween is also known by other names:

- All Hallows Eve

- Samhain

- All Hallowtide

- The Feast of the Dead

- The Day of the Dead

- Nos Calan Gaeaf (Halloween in Welsh)

4) In Mexico, they celebrate Halloween or the Day of the Dead starting the evening of October 31.

5) When the Romans conquered England, they merged Samhain with their own festivals, a harvest festival called Poloma, and a celebration for the dead called Feralia.

6) When Christianity came to England and the rest of Europe, 1 November became All Saints Day – a day dedicated to all those saints who didn’t have a special day of their own. They performed a mass called ‘All hallows mass’ and the night before became known as All Hallows E’en and eventually Hallowe’en or Halloween.

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7) Black cats were originally believed to protect witches’ powers from negative forces.

About 99% of pumpkins sold are used as Jack O’ Lanterns at Halloween.

9) It is thought that the colors orange and black became Halloween colors because orange is associated with harvests (Halloween masks the end of harvest) and black is associated with death.

10) A pumpkin is really a squash, and comes from the same family as the cucumber.

11) The biggest pumpkin in the world tipped the scales at a whopping 1,446 pounds. This gigantic gourd was weighed in October 2004 at a pumpkin festival in Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada.

12) Top Tips for Halloween: If your pumpkin lantern shrivels up, you can restore it by soaking it overnight in water to rehydrate it.

13) The very first jack o’ lantern was made out of hollowed out turnips.

14) The record for the fastest pumpkin carver in the world is Jerry Ayers of Baltimore, Ohio. He carved a pumpkin in just 37 seconds!

15) If you see a spider on this night, it could be the spirit of a dead loved one who is watching you.

16) Ringing a bell on Halloween eve scares evil spirits away.

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17) If you want to meet a witch, put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards on Halloween night.

On October 31 each year, is the Halloween festival for demos and ghosts turning out in West, as the story goes that its origin could been traced back to the fifth century BC, at that time the Celtic living in Ireland’s agreed on this day as the end of the summer, and it also indicates the end of a year, they believed that on the eve of the alternation of a new year and old year, all laws of the time and the space will be suspended for the time being, and the door of the spirit world in this evening will open, thus make all ghosts had a opportunity to walk through the earth, and to find a suitable substitute which could help her to gain a reborn chance. So, as been afraid of becoming the goal of the ghosts, the Celtics put down the fire and to pretended that nobody were at home, at the same time, they wearing awful and ferocious masks and dressed into ghosts and demons walk along the street, hereby to produce a noisy and hubbub atmosphere in order to drive away those wandering ghosts and spirits.

Gradually, these customs have evolved into a celebration of young peoples today, in this evening everybody could disguised themselves to the top of their bent and enjoy a happy festival.

In the evening of Halloween there’s also a parade particularly in the New York City, in which a group of vampires, zombies, witches and Frankenstein and so on will appeared together at that night, and common citizens are also been welcomed to visit, all members no matter what age, sex, class or nationality, even if you are a coward, could join them to enjoy this hot and bustling carnival of ghosts and human beings.

In fact, these ghosts and spirits are all disguised by people, so it’s not terrible really, on the contrary, there are some small grimaced impersonators are very lovely and funny, among in them as if you had been attended in a large fancy ball.

In these various playacting roles, the witch and the corpse are the most played character selected by people, and to meet the demand, those shops who specially supplied Halloween products or decorations also have prepared for this group of Halloween costumes for sale.

At the same time, each year those manufacturers will launch masks and costumes in Halloween whose designs are based on the hottest figure in that year on the market, so that more people could be involved in the hot trend of this traditional western holiday, for example, the figure of small wizard in the movie Harry Potter has become a featured character that a number of children were bound to choose.

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If you wish to find some Halloween crafts for your kids, there are a number of places that you can go. For starters, you can check out the internet. A number of websites today are dedicated to Halloween crafts for kids and you can get many different ideas from these sites as to how you and your children can have fun while decorating your home on Halloween. Here are few of the most favourite Halloween crafts that you can make with your kids.

Sparkling spiders are one of the most popular Halloween crafts among kids. You scatter these easy to make spiders around your house or hang them from the ceiling to decorate your table. First take a Styrofoam ball of about 4”. Use craft sponge to paint the ball dark purple. While the paint is still wet, sparingly sprinkle some white glitter. Stick googly eyes to it and use black pipe cleaners to make the legs on the sides. Bend the pipes so that it looks like the spider is standing on its own. This makes your very own sparkly spider.

You can use a simple cardboard egg carton for this next Halloween craft for kids. Take three successive egg cups attached to each other and cut them from the rest of the carton. Cut out the fronts of the two outside cups to simulate wings. If possible, paint the entire carton black and attach googly eyes with some white glue or draw a bat face. On top of the middle cup, punch a hole and tie a string around it with a knot at one end. You can hang this bat wherever you wish.

Making Halloween crafts for kids is not a difficult task at all although there are a few crafts that require an adult to supervise. If you have bushes around your house, this Halloween craft will ensure that all your neighbours will talk about your Halloween decorations. First, fold a plain white sheet into half. Stuff a few newspapers between the folds. Then, use black craft paint or a permanent marker to draw a funny or scary ghost face on top of the sheet. After it dries, cover the bush with it, pull it tightly from the back and attach with some clothespin to make your own garden ghost.

If you apply your imagination and creativity there is no end to the number of crafts you can make with your kids on Halloween. Ask your children to come up with their own crafts. Use candy corn to decorate a candle or tape pumpkin faces made from construction paper on your windows. There are endless possibilities. Even adults can have fun making kids Halloween crafts. So craft away with your children and become a child yourself.