Fascinating Facts about Halloween
Halloween is almost upon us once again and the Party Tracker team would like to point out some intresting facts about Halloween.
Did you know:
Halloween is always celebrated on 31 October.
Halloween is correctly spelt as Hallowe’en.
Halloween is also known by other names, such as All Hallows Eve, All Hallowtide, The Feast of the Dead, The Day of the Dead and Samhain.
Halloween in Welsh is ‘Nos Calan Gaeaf’.
When Christianity came to England and the rest of Europe, 1 November became All Saints Day, which is a day dedicated to all those saints who didn’t have a special day of their own. they performed a mass called ‘A Hallows Mass’ and the night before which is the 31 October became known as All Hallows E’en and eventually Hallowe’en or Halloween,as we know it today.
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.
If you see a spider on the night of Halloween, it could be the spirit of a dead loved one who is watching over you.
If you wear your Halloween fancy dress costume inside out and walk backwards on the night of Halloween, you have a good chance of meeting a witch.
It is thought that the orange and black colours became Halloween colours because orange is associated with harvests and black is associated with death.
Black cats were originally believed to protect witches’ powers from negative forces.
A pumpkin comes from the same family as a cucumber and it is really a squash.
The biggest pumpkin in the world was weighed at a pumpkin festival in Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada, in October 2004 and tipped the scales at a whopping 1,446 pounds.
The record for the fastest pumpkin carver in the world is Jerry Ayers of Baltimore, Ohio, USA, who carved a pumpkin in just 37 seconds.
About 99% of pumpkins sold during October are used as Jack O’ Lanterns for Halloween. If your pumpkin lantern shrivels up, soak it overnight in water to restore and re-hydrate it.
The very first Jack O’ Lantern was made out of hallowed out turnips.