Halloween

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Halloween is a holiday traditionally celebrated on October 31st. The holiday typically involves children dressing up in costumes and going trick-or-treating. Through this, they receive candy or other treats dropped in bags, though an occasional trick can't be ruled out. Halloween is often celebrated through parties. It is associated with the colors of orange and black and is symbolized through various spooky elements including ghosts and goblins, black cats and carved pumpkins known as "jack-o-lanterns."

History

The possible origin of Halloween goes back about 2000 years ago, to the ancient people called the Barbarian Celts who lived in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the parts of northern France celebrated a very festive holiday called Samhain on November 1st. Which it was their new years eve, marking the end of the summer, and the beginning of winter at midnight, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Their new year started the next day, but on that night before the new year, the Celts believed that this was a time when the dead returned as ghosts and revisited people's home's because the boundary between the world of the living and the dead became very blurred. In addition from causing trouble and damaging crops, the Celts had traditional ways to drive the dead back to the spirit world and keep them away from the living. First they put out the hearth fires in their homes so that the homes looked cold and deserted. Then the Druids built huge sacred bonfires in the center of town where the people are gathered to burn crops and the animals as sacrifices to their Celtic deities. And to avoid being recgonized by the evil spirits they dressed up in spooky costumes that looked like ghosts or other evil creatures when they left their home's at night so the ghosts would not mistake them for fellow spirits but they left their doors open so that the good spirits can join in by placing tables for these good spirits. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter. By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and the trees. This is the possible origin of bobbing for apples. On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 through November 1. However that didn't work exactly the way he wanted because the people liked their holidays. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve later, the name was changed to Halloween. From the Celtic times to the middle ages, the Celts began to leave food or drinks outside their door steps as offerings to keep roaming spirits at bay and well fed so they wouldn't cause trouble. By medieval times, the first popular All Souls' Day practice was to make "soul cakes,". "In a custom of "souling", the children went from door-to-door asking for soul cakes that are square bread with currants during Samhain. For every soul cake that a child collected, they promised to pray for the souls of peoples dead relatives. These prayers would help the person's dead relatives find their way out of Purgatory and up into Heaven, as this is the possible origin of Trick or treating. Several centuries ago amongst myriad towns and villages in Ireland, there lived a man named Stingy Jack who was nice and kind, until one night he invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack has decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which stopped the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under one condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that when Jack should die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack tricked the Devil again into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years. Many years later, Jack died, and his soul went to go knock on Heaven's door but he was not allowed to enter Heaven because Jack had been rude and selfish all his life then Jack decided that he might as well go to Hell instead. When he got to the Gates of Hell and begged for commission into the underworld. He wasn't welcome by the devil, either because of his promise he made to Jack years earlier and because Jack tricked him several times. Now Jack was scared because he had nowhere to go so he pleaded with the Devil to provide him with a light to help him find his way. And as a final gesture, the Devil, tossed Jack an ember straight from the fires of Hell. And from that day to this, Stingy Jack is doomed to roam the Earth until Judgement Day without a resting place between the planes of Heaven and Hell, with only an ember inside a hollowed turnip. Because he couldn't see in the dark, he carved out a turnip or a potato and putted in a lump of coal he got from the devil earlier. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” and then, simply “Jack O’Lantern.” On All-hallows Eve, the Irish people began to place lights in them and carve scary faces onto turnips, gourds, potatoes, and beets. They placed them in windows or near doors to frighten Jack away from their homes which later became the tradition of carving Jack O’Lanterns”. By the early 1800's the great potato famine forced the people from Ireland to immigrate to America because many people were starving and they had no choice but to leave and in doing so they brought their traditions with them.

The Simpsons media

Within the world of The Simpsons, Halloween has been depicted in a number of releases, including the following.

• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror" (1990)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror II" (1991)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror III" (1992)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror IV" (1993)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror V" (1994)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror VI" (1995)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror VII" (1996)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror VIII" (1997)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror IX" (1998)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror X" (1999)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XI" (2000)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XII" (2001)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XIII" (2002)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XIV" (2003)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XV" (2004)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XVI" (2005)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XVII" (2006)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XVIII" (2007)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XIX" (2008)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XX" (2009)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXI" (2010)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXII" (2011)
• The Simpsons Tapped Out: "Treehouse of Horror XXIII Event" (2012)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXIII" (2012)
• The Simpsons Tapped Out: "Treehouse of Horror XXIV Event" (2013)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXIV" (2013)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXV" (2014)
• The Simpsons Tapped Out: "Treehouse of Horror XXV Event" (2014)
• The Simpsons: "Halloween of Horror" (2015)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXVI" (2015)
• The Simpsons Tapped Out: "Treehouse of Horror XXVI Event" (2015)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXVII" (2016)
• The Simpsons Tapped Out: "Treehouse of Horror XXVII Event" (2016)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII" (2017)
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXIX" (2018) 
• The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXX" (2019)