Halloween is here!

Tonight is the night of the spirits, ghosts, vampires, demons, werewolves, hybrids… Tonight is the night of the supernatural world.

Do you know anything about Halloween’s history and its origins? I’ll be brief:

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. The word Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows' Evening also known as Hallowe'en or All Hallows' Eve.

There are two different hypothesis of its origin:

The first one is related to the Celts; Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"). The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture.

The second one is associated with the Christianity; In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, which 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 and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

First and foremost, I would like to explain why I’ve dedicated a post to this almost international holiday. Before 2011, I wasn’t knee on Halloween, because I didn’t really know its meaning. Moreover, not many people in Spain celebrate it. Now, you are eager to know the fact that changed my mind completely, aren’t you? The answer is an exchange. An exchange to the States made me think differently about Halloween. At the end of October, my high school classmates and I went to New Jersey for a couple of week, where we stayed in with an American family. Therefore, we were able to live as American citizens for 15 days. It was amazing! We went to their High School (Hopewell Valley), we went on some trips, for instance, to New York City, we went to a Hayride of Horror -it was the creepiest experience I’ve ever had- and we made our own Haunted Houses, as well. My “American mum”, Nina, loves Halloween and everything that it involves, I mean, decorating the house, carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating… so, she decided to did a party in our house where we built a kind of Haunted House -we went to the supermarket to buy enormous black spiders, bloody hands and feet, bats, diabolical clowns, etc. As you can imagine, in the end I fell in love with Halloween and its customs.

I liked it so much that since 2011, every year I celebrated Halloween. I decorate my house with black and with spider webs, pumpkins, witches, spiders, to short, with scary things.

I hope you enjoy your spooky Halloween night!

 Macarena