Traditions and Legends around Halloween
Halloween is one of the best celebrations throughout the year. At this day, everyone can put on the scariest costume and go around the block for trick or treat tradition. Children love Halloween for they can spend the night with their friend and get candies and cookies from neighbors. Even though Halloween was meant to be the day when the ghosts and evil creatures come out from hell and walk in the earth, we seem to think this day as a day of full celebration and partying. When children go around the block for candies and cookies, adults meet and have big party. Everyone can wear their best costume and pretend to be creature from hell or superhero. So, costume is the most important item for this day. Without Halloween costume, you can’t expect that you will be allowed to join the party.
Even though the tradition on Halloween has changed into costume party, you can still find one important thing that you must have in your house for this day. It’s the Jack O’Lantern. It’s made of big yellow pumpkin carved to create scary facial expression. Then, you put a lamp or candle inside it. It’s the main decoration for Halloween. You surely have heard the legend of this Jack O’Lantern, the story of an evil man who loved to trick devil on climbing tree. Then, he marked the tree with cross before the devil had the chance to climb down. It’s a trap for the devil. When Jack died, heaven rejected his evil spirit, while hell didn’t want to accept him either. So, his evil spirit was trapped on earth and he was forced to walk the earth with hollowed-out turnip. He was only given a piece of burning coal to light his way. Therefore, you can always find this similar shaped Jack O’Lantern as Halloween party decorations.
Costumes also have great part on this celebration. Adults are partying on their adult costumes for all night long. Meanwhile, children are doing other tradition on trick or treat. This tradition was begin in Britain when the poor going door to door, asking for food on November 1st. Now, we change food into candies, cookies, or chocolate. However, we still keep the tradition of wearing costume on this day. We have lots of choices of Halloween costume for children and adults. If girls usually pick princess costumes, boys costumes are mostly on comic characters. We still have other tradition of watching horror movies on this day. With so many traditions on this Halloween Day, it always becomes one of the most favorite holiday for children and adults.