Halloween - All Saints' Day Eve (Samine)

Halloween is an opportunity to return to childhood for a short time.Impunity to joke with friends and relatives is allowed only in April. In English-speaking countries, this can also be done in autumn. The night from October 31 to November 1 is a legitimate occasion for especially evil and gloomy jokes - Halloween.

Every self-respecting Canadian remembers Halloween with the arrival of autumn. Since September, rubber goblins appear in the yards of houses, and spiders and ghosts look out of the windows. In the course there are pumpkins, and wandering electric lights, and toy witches “smeared” on the wall, and devices that make heartbreaking moans.

On souvenirs, costumes of witches and pumpkins - symbols of the holiday - residents of Canada and the States spend billions of dollars, and on the "responsibility" Halloween there - the second national holiday after Christmas.

On Halloween, everything “wonderful” happens, in the words of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s fairy tale.

Young children, dressed as witches and dragons, run from house to house with flashlights in their hands and "carol" with the words "Buy or dirty". If you don’t sacrifice sweets or apples to these evil little demons, they might actually make a cruel joke on you, like smearing toothpaste on the door handle. Adult uncles and aunts dress up in masquerade costumes on the principle of “the scarier, the cooler”, put on masks (the most popular heroes today are George Bush and Osama bin Laden) and go out to have fun on the streets of the city.

For Halloween, Canadians and Americans can say “thank you” to the Irish, who, fleeing from potato crop failure, moved to North America in the second half of the last century and brought with them a feast of evil spirits. And before the Irish - the ancient Celts, who chose November 1 for their New Year.

There's no Halloween without a pumpkin. And although the holiday itself is a European invention, pumpkin is already its American element, because it is a native of this continent. In England, Ireland and Scotland, terrible masks, into which candles were inserted, were cut from turnips, beets or large potatoes. But pumpkin is the best fit for Halloween. Seeds and flesh are removed from the fruit, then the face is cut out and a candle is inserted inside. For hundreds of years, on October 31, the Jack Lantern glows in every window, scaring away evil spirits.

And, agree that Halloween is a good holiday: after all, wet autumn, when early darkness affects your nerves, and the cold wind evokes gloomy thoughts - it's time to tell terrible tales and laugh at your fears.

(Used by K. STANKEVICH, www.tio.by)