“Halloween”, as the Americans call it, or Halloween, is the night before All Saints, celebrated in the evening hours of October 31. On this day, everyone dresses up as ghosts, skeletons, witches, and other creatures of the night.
Children collect sweets by going from door to door with the question: “Trick or treating?”. Keep reading to find out the story behind Halloween and enjoy our favorite quotes about this holiday.
Funny Halloween Quotes
“This Halloween I’m going as a human disaster that way I don’t have [to] get dressed up.”
Jim Gaffigan
“As a kid, Halloween was amazing. You dress like a superhero, you bang on your neighbor’s door, and they give you candy. I do that today, and my neighbour wants me arrested.”
Jim Gaffigan
“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”
Ogden Nash
“Candy was my whole life when I was a kid. The first ten years of my life, I think the only clear thought I had was ‘get candy.’ Family, friends, school; they’re just obstacles in the way of the candy.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“Every October I’m kidnapped and forced to scare birds at a local pumpkin patch.”
Conan O’Brien
“For Halloween, I’m going as that feeling you get at a store when you try to refold a sweater property and put it back on the shelf.”
Rob Delaney
“Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, ‘Never take candy from strangers.’ And then they dressed me up and said, ‘Go beg for it.’ I didn’t know what to do! I’d knock on people’s doors and go, ‘Trick or treat…no, thank you.’”
Rita Rudner
“How many girls are telling themselves right now: “Dammit Becky learn your lesson; even on Halloween, glitter is NEVER worth it.”
Anne Kendrick
“I’m just like any modern woman trying to have it all. Loving husband, a family. It’s just, I wish I had more time to seek out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade.”
Morticia Addams
“Halloween is right around the corner. You can tell because all the stores are decked out for Christmas.”
Stephen Colbert
“If the ghost of a murdered girl really existed I think she’d have something better to do than haunt people who don’t forward chain emails.”
Rhys James
“It’s that special time of year where we voluntarily imbibe pumpkin-spiced lattes: the coffee that tastes like a candle.”
John Oliver
“Just put on my Halloween costume! This year I’m going as ‘Guy Who Thinks Halloween Is On October 18th.”
Stephen Colbert
“Kinda spooky that Halloween has never fallen on Friday the 13th.”
Stephen Colbert
“Little tip, when you show up to a Halloween party not dressed up, it’s the same as showing up to a normal party in a costume.”
Josh Groban
“Now Halloween’s over, it’s time to start thinking about the next time you’re gonna annoy your neighbors -carolling.”
Ellen DeGeneres
“The first time you hear the concept of Halloween when you’re a kid, your brain can’t even process the information. You’re like, ‘What is this? What did you say about giving out candy? Who is giving out candy?’ Everyone that we know is just giving out candy?’”
Jerry Seinfeld
“Was deciding if I should dress as Batman or Spiderman for Halloween, when I realized I’m a grown man. So, Batman.”
Stephen Colbert
“We’ve made it to Sunday. Halloween is still 4 days away. We have to stay strong together. It will all be over soon.”
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
“Everything in this room is eatable. Even I’m eatable! But that is called ‘cannibalism,’ my dear children, and is in fact, frowned upon in most societies.”
Charlie Bucket
Halloween Movie Quotes
“I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.”
The Addams Family
“It’s Halloween, everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”
Halloween
“I’m a mouse, duh!”
Mean Girls
“Oh look, another glorious morning. Makes me sick.”
Hocus Pocus
“You can’t kill the bogeyman!”
Halloween
“I’m a ghost with the most, babe.”
Beetlejuice
“It’s a full moon tonight. That’s when all the weirdos are out.”
Hocus Pocus
“I am the pumpkin king.”
The Nightmare Before Christmas
“When there is no room left in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
Dawn of the Dead
“Last night you were unhinged. You were like some desperate, howling demon. You frightened me. Do it again.”
The Addams Family
“We’ve got to find Jack! There are only 365 days left until next Halloween.”
The Nightmare Before Christmas
“Isn’t the view beautiful? It takes my breath away. Well, it would if I had any.”
Corpse Bride
“I see dead people.”
Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense
“Every day is Halloween, isn’t it? For some of us.”
Tim Burton
“There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly lit front porch.”
Robert Brault
Short Halloween Quotes
“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
Stephen King
“I am the pumpkin king.”
Jack
“She’d always loved Halloween. A magic night. A night when anything could happen. Monsters could be real. Magic could whisper in the air.”
Cynthia Eden
“Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve.”
Ray Bradbury
“It’s Halloween! It’s Halloween! The moon is full and bright and we shall see that can’t be seen on any other night.”
Jack Prelutsky
“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”
Mary Shelley
“Oh how the candles will be lit and the wood of worm burn in a fiery dust. For on all Hallows’ Eve will the spirits come to play.”
Solange Nicole
“They cannot be seen because they creep only in the dark.”
H.P. Lovecraft
“They thought of All Hallows’ Night and the billion ghosts awandering the lonely lanes in cold winds and strange smokes.”
Ray Bradbury
“In masks and gowns we haunt the street and knock on doors for trick or treat.”
Jack Prelutsky
“This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else.”
Wednesday Addams
“I might play with my cat and then go trick people to death.”
Scott Holstad
“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.”
H.P. Lovecraft
“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”
Oscar Wilde
“Imagination be a witch tonight.”
Robert Bagg
The Spooky 0rigins of Halloween
As early as mid-October, preparations for this already widespread holiday, marked by costume parties, begin. To make the party complete, everyone has to dress up and make pumpkin lanterns for their homes. On Halloween people watch horror films and tell scary stories, and entire settlements and cities take on a spooky tone.
This custom has its origins in the pagan Celtic peoples of Ireland, Britain, and northern France. Since they believed that life is born from death, they used the end of autumn to mark the beginning of their new year, the period when nature dies, because its death, according to their belief, represents the time of darkness, decay, and death. On that day, the fire in the home hearths was extinguished and darkness reigned everywhere.
On the last evening of the autumn harvest, nature changes, and the sunny and warm summer gives way to the dark and frosty winter, and the fertile land becomes barren. The Celts believed that night to be magical and attached immense importance to it.
Halloween is the second biggest holiday, after Christmas, which is celebrated in the world. However, some are afraid of it, and this fear even has a professional name – Samhainophobia.
Summoning the Spirits
According to the tradition of the Celts, the souls of the dead would completely belong to the god Samhain, the prince of death, so it was necessary to propitiate him with a sacrifice on (their) new year’s day. In turn, Samhain would allow the souls of the dead to visit their family homes on that day.
It is from there that the custom of masquerading as skeletons, ghosts, and other demons originates. By masquerading, the living enter into mystical communion with the dead, imitating the dead and wandering in the dark.
According to another tradition, people masked themselves and made noise to avoid the spirits of the dead descending on the earth that night.
Orange and black are the dominant colors during this holiday. The first is associated with the harvest and the pumpkin, and the second is associated with death and darkness.
Trick or Treat?
According to belief, the souls of the dead who would come to “visit” were starving and begging for food, so they had to be fed. In this way, the custom called “trick or treating” was born. If it were to happen that one of the living did not entertain (treat) the souls of the dead, the revenge (trick) of the god Samhain would come to them.
This custom today consists in extorting sweets. Children go door to door, mostly in the neighborhood, asking for sweets from the host. On that occasion, they set an ultimatum: “trick or treating?”, i.e. “trick or treat?”, announcing the trouble they could cause if they don’t get candy.
This tradition also has certain roots in the Middle Ages, when the poor went from door to door, begging for food, while in turn, they prayed for the deceased ancestors of those who gave them food.
According to a tradition that expresses a certain skepticism about the descent of the souls of the dead, people would leave food in front of the front door so that the spirits would leave in peace and not harm anyone.
The Significance of Pumpkins
The custom of carving pumpkins into demonic shapes dates back to the 16th century. Allegedly, a certain Irish blacksmith Jack O’Lantern is the first to be credited with starting this tradition.
According to legend, Jack tricked the Devil twice, the first time he asked the Devil to pay for his drink in exchange for his soul. When the Devil turned into a coin to pay for the drink, the resourceful Jack quickly grabbed the coin and put it in the pocket that already contained the cross. As the cross made it impossible for the Devil to return to his former form, he promised the wise Irishman that he would not seek his soul for the next ten years if he freed him.
When ten years had passed, during the re-arranged meeting, Jack outsmarted the Devil a second time, asking him to give him an apple from the tree. In the meantime, he quickly carved the shape of a cross into the bark of the tree and thus again made it impossible for the Devil to harm him.
When the Irishman died, he was not accepted into Heaven because of his sinful life, so the Devil met him outside Hell and sent him forever into the darkness with a lump of coal (ember). Since he always carried a turnip with him, he hollowed it out and put embers in it. Since then it has been turnip became a symbol of a cursed soul wandering between worlds.
Today, on the occasion of Halloween, turnips or pumpkins are hollowed out and made into scary shapes. Although the tradition of carving turnips has mostly died out.
The Celts believed that the head is the most powerful part of the body, so they put the “head” of this vegetable on a candle to dispel the superstition.
With the arrival of the Romans, “the night when the dead rise” continued to exist in a changed belief – on the same date as the ancient Celts, these people celebrated the night when the god of darkness kills the god of light and takes the goddess of nature to the underworld where she will rest over the winter and take care of souls of the dead.
The ancient Romans left food and hollowed-out turnips on the doorsteps of their houses, in which they put lighted candles to scare away sinful souls and help good ones find their way home.
Halloween in other Societies
The tradition of celebrating Halloween was brought to North America by Irish immigrants in the 19th century. Anoka in Minnesota is the oldest American city where this holiday was celebrated, starting in 1920. Halloween is popularly celebrated today in the USA, Ireland, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Puerto Rico, Japan, New Zealand, and parts of Australia.
Millions of people around the world celebrate Halloween on the night after the last day of October with masquerade balls, campfires, and the inevitable pumpkins. Although today it is one of the most commercialized holidays in Western culture, the origins of Halloween are thousands of years old.
Nothing Could Beat Halloween
The custom remained so rooted in the consciousness of the people that even Christianity failed to eradicate it. Instead of banning it, the church adapted the holiday, so the last day of October became the beginning of a three-day holiday dedicated to the memory of the dead – saints, martyrs, as well as all deceased believers. This is how the holiday of All Saints was born, and the night of the pagan gods became All Saints’ Night.
The church introduced the custom that choirs of believers go from house to house and in exchange for food to the host, they sing and pray to the spirits of all the deceased members of that home. Over time, that custom changed and today children go from door to door, asking for sweets and exclaiming “trick or treat”.
Other Symbols of Halloween
In addition to costumes and candy, Halloween symbols include hollowed-out pumpkins, candles, horror movies, and scary stories, as well as the colors orange and black, with orange symbolizing the harvest and black death.
In more recent times, Halloween started to change, and people started embedding pop culture references in their outfits.
Wrapping Up
Although full of fear and horror, Halloween is one of the most popular holidays celebrated in autumn around the world. Therefore, if you are up for some festive laughter and jokes, try to find a costume in which you will appear at one of the many parties that are organized on the night of October 31st.
Who knows, maybe just like that, under a scary mask, you stumble upon your soul mate in the dark, and in the night of terror, you start your fairy tale with a happy ending.
