Festivals Similar to Halloween Celebrated throughout the World
Quickly usher in the night to enjoy true freedom. Festive celebration and comfort are apt to take place inside the home. Charge out into the emptiness of a wide, open expanse or field and dare the dark spirits of the night to challenge you. Have a little festival of your own before delving into festivals of other times and places and get to know the spirit that is Halloween, a night of mystery with its black and orange fonts and boggy lights. If you dare.For those other readers who want to live without fear or challenge, read on to find out more about themed festivals similar in popularity to Halloween hosted in various places and territories scattered throughout the globe. You will be guided by the grim spectre of Christmas past (ghost nonetheless) - our very own resident specialist in dark hopes H.P. Lovecraft of Massachusetts, New England - down nefarious corridors of mystique, veil, and sublime horror ... toward darkening hour of Halloween day and tower chime that churn the way ... to the witching hour at hand.France - Halloween"He beckoned me into a low, candle-lit room with massive exposed rafters and dark, stiff, sparse furniture of the seventeenth century." - Di’scheu*Halloween as celebrated in France was introduced, according to popular claim, at a bar room celebration designated for couples only in 1982 at the American Dream (a bar & restaurant). Gradually Halloween worked its way in to the decor of popular shops and further spread when in 1996, the French city of St. Germaine-en-Laye decided to host a demonstration on October 24th during the mid-day to exhibit and explain its popularity. Currently, well-known brand name businesses such as McDonalds or Pepsi work to increase the profile of the second most profitable celebration of the year, as it isknownin special quarters.As one might expect, the French who celebrate Halloween take the opportunity to serve special, creative, decorative foods. Shops such as restaurants and pastry shops that serve chocolate confection further spread news of Halloween by decoration and placement of fanciful figures and related scares where one may least expect them. Underlying the theme were basic Dualist idea of good vs. bad - eternal battle amid that imperiledworld of spirits. Bad spirits can be chased away with scary masks whilst good spirits are treated to food concomitant with joy and celebration. Spreading merriment and seasonal resurrection of anyone's guard by employing simple decorum, of course, takes special tact and consideration. With that in mind, costumes that inspire scare or fear are rumored to dominate in matters of choice attire that those who dress up choose in expressing themselves for seasonal appearances of inscrutable mystique.The other nuance of difference is that actual cemeteries are generally attendedto pay respectsto the dead on All Saints Day that corresponds with Halloween. As such, there could be something of a quantum leap involved in regarding just any cemetary to be chock full of ghosts. Serious spooks are more likely to be in abandoned cemeteries that qualify as spectacles of neglect and in smaller plots where no one ever tends nor visits. Perhaps a cemetery full of flowers and gifts scare away bad spirits. There may be something to the notion that neglect attracts bad spirits.As a bonus, because of France's European disposition, history, and zeal for freedom; the day that follows Halloween in the modern time - All Souls Day - is a national holiday that lets students and employees alike rest.Parents can take kids down Main Street (that becomes Spook Street for the occasion) to seeDisneyland Parisat night.The city of Limoges has been rumored to have demonstrated a great showing for the holiday and apparently offers a Halloween parade where people bring hollowed-out jack-o-lanterns that brighten unsheathed against pours of darkness. Attendance of 30,000 participants has been cited. The most major cities such as Paris are also quite likely to have Halloween activities going on.There are also reports that Halloween activities could becontroversial in France, and that its popularity has been on the decline since this past decade of unusually bitter treachery that has inserted itself into each specific regard. What another night in the wrong hands of partying with mindless indulgence could accomplish certainly grates against significance to underlying occasion lest Halloween itself mask observances left behind to engender greater innocence and friendlier participation in common equity.Great Britain - Halloween"So I tried to read, and soon became tremblingly absorbed by something I found in that accursed Necronomicon; a thought and a legend too hideous for sanity or consciousness, but I disliked it when I fancied I heard the closing of one of the windows that the settle faced, as if it had been stealthily opened."Once recognized asMischief Nightfor tricks and pranks rather more severe than oiling the windows of getaway cars and rigging buckets of fake blood to fall on gangsters, Halloween in Great Britain remains more the skeleton of pagan Samhain, Summer's End, the very aftermath of various attempts by Roman church papacy to discourage popularity of paganic rites themselves from effacing church prominence after two separate decisions that finalized in celebrations of All Saints Day on All Hallows Eve and All Souls Day, celebrated the following day.Christians celebrated the holidays by wearing fancy dress. Candles were use to facilitate transmigration and ease suffering of souls whose bodies were dead.There is no trick-or-treat tradition in Great Britain of mention. Instead, children knock on doors seeking contributions for the poor and sometimes are given Saumas cakes, meaning Soul Mass cakes, made like dark fruitcakes or buns topped with caraway that vary in specifics from region to region. Children who receive a Soul Mass cake then offer prayer for those members lost to the family. Mass then were held for souls since departed.North England is said to observe the day by lighting bonfires at night.Some Englanders observeLating, a superstition practiced by lighting candles. If their candle goes out between 11 - Midnight, then its significance betoken that of a bad omen and has been snuffed by witches. Then the person is considered at risk of successive casualty due to proneness from haunting. However, if no one holds the candle then a ghost has performed the deed.China - Teng Chieh"We went out into the moonless and tortuous network of that incredibly ancient town; went out as the lights in the curtained windows disappeared one by one, and the Dog Star leered at the throng of cowled, cloaked figures that poured silently from every doorway and formed monstrous processions up this street and that, past the creaking sigus and antediluvian gables, the thatched roofs and diamond-paned windows; threading precipitous lanes where decaying houses overlapped and crumbled together; gliding across open courts and churchyards where the bobbing lanthorns made eldritch drunken constellations."By the dawn of the half of July upon Full Moon Night (hence, "Shangyuan," as the festival is also called by), those of the Chinese culture celebrate their own festival of spirits, Teng Chieh, by making spectacular lanterns of animals, birds, and dragons and causing these to be illuminated from within. Teng Chieh appears to recognize, rather than annual demise of nature's own continual presence, regard for actual separation of Summer's hottest vigors as latitude begin to yield to planetary elliptical descent. It is this day, sometimes called anticipated for ghosts to be loosed upon the world, presumably in the Northern hemisphere were seasons equate.On Shangyuan night for the lantern festival, participants try to answer questions sometimesposted on lanternsin exchange for special rewards.Sweet rice dumplings with fillings flowery and diverseaccompany the celebration.Iran - Charshanbe Suri"It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten."Bonfires welcome guests to the Persian equivalent of Halloween celebrated in Iran, and with the dawn of evening festivities begin. Just as we in America say, "Happy Halloween," Persians refer to, "Charshanbe Soori," indicating the holiday celebrated on the final Wednesday of the Eastern desert's calendrical year, Red Wednesday Eve."Ashey Ch-harr Shan-b'y Suri," meaning, "Noodle Soup," or "Adjiel Ch-harr Shan-b'y Suri," ("Fruits & Nuts") are traditional foods served. Soori were celebrated just prior to the New Year, Noruz, as the "Feast of the Last Wednesday," observed around or after the Ides of March when doldrum winds begin to signify certain arrival of Spring and altogether those last vestiges of Winter trends.Children go out in costumes or traditional white fabric to descend upon their neighborhoods in hopes of getting treats, using spoons to produce noise in ancient reminder that this final Wednesday were an unlucky day.At the Suri festival, people of any status or religion come together in celebration to gesture absentiation of ill-will or revive prior friendship. The night ends in feasting and fireworks. Joys and prayers accompany hopes of the best from the new year. Dancing and music sometimes follow.The more pagan aspects consist of leaping over a bonfire and singing, "Sorkhiye to az man, Zardiye man az to." This means something like, "As its fire gives to me power - I yield to its fire my pallor." There were also wishing, a type of fortune telling called "Fal Gush," where one would try to overhear passersby and look for a positive sign that could prove that a wish could come true. Some claim that Fal Gush wereseldom practicedin an urban setting.Numerous burn-related injuries that accompany the festival often discourage participation or promotion by specific religious authority.Charshanbe Soori should not be mistaken for the Persian fire festival that occurs January 31st.Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine: Eid il-Burbara"As I hung back, the old man produced his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy of my fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place; that it had been decreed I should come back, and that the most secret mysteries were yet to be performed."According to history, Juan Cabrillo named the city of Santa Barbara, California in 1602 after surviving a terrible storm that very December 3rd. Barbara was a fourth century woman whose overprotective father Dioscorus turned her over to Roman authority that had her executed for practicing the Christian faith that she had learned in secret. She had offended a judge called Martinianus with her words in response to his question about how to heal his wounds, since her own wounds were found healed shortly after haven been beat bloody, answering, ".... They may not help themselves. He that healed me is Jesu Christ, the Son of God, the which will not have thee because thy heart is so indurate and hard with the devils." Admittedly, one probably has to understand where she were coming from for any appearance of insult not to sting. Cabrillo named the Californian coastal city out of gratitude for having survived the desolation of the torrent and landing safely.Prior to captivity, Barbara was then said to hadtaken flight from her captors, at some point running through a field of wheat that grew to disguise signs of her progress. Soon after discovery and after some time of asylum, her father carried out the judge's orders of execution by beheading. Soon after, her father was shot up with lightening and vaporized. Scholars can't seem to validate the story, apart from legend, and St. Barbara is not recognized by the liturgical calendar as of 1969. But St. Barbara has also been adopted as the patron saint of artillery.To elude the Romans, St. Barbara disguised herself as one of innumerable characters, according to Lebanese belief. Eventually someone aware of her refuge spooked at the sight of the Romans and told them her location. Her feast day falls on December 4 in the Levant quarter of nation-states of the Middle East. And signs of her devotion are embraced byexclusive military societies and associations throughout the world, who venerate this saint in homage.Significance explains the crucial difference between the Festival of St. Barbara and Halloween as known throughout the world. Arab Christians keep Eid il-Burbara true to its Christian origins and as such do not officially recognize the day's Celtic origin. Other than that,festivitiesgreatly resemble those practiced popularly on Halloween, from trick-or-treating to dress-up and celebrations both private and public, along with pumpkin carving. However, in stark contrast, there are no evident reports of haunted houses, witches, nor emphases on the spirit world of ghosts and ghouls so thematic to Halloween. Some report that by tradition children are servedBurbara, a hot, sweet, liquid, spicy blend of barley, raisins, and pomegranate seeds rather than the familiar fare of candy and similar treats.In Pakistan, restaurants sometimes adopt the holiday and decorate, going so far as to serve special meals. Butby night, only couplesmay enter, to minimize safety concerns.Wheat also weresown for the occasionand harvested for use in Christmas holiday decoration of the below-tree manger panorama.So, did you go deep into the jaws of night, where only clutched and caught limbs with shining eyes or gibbet wights can be seen?In taking our rather brief tour of festive occasions practiced like the Halloween that we know so well, you now know that it's not always about haunting but more often about wearing costumes or going door to door to spread news of the Winter. And additionally, scary dress often accompanies the celebrations and sometimes bonfires but usually it's about eating special foods and treating each other to costumes at parties at homes or in bars, but sometimes in greater festival activities that can encompass the economy and earn decorous observance by businesses throughout town. You also know that the festivals are usually cultural expressions usually based on foibles & significance in seasonal changes and often based on religious traditions that have long deserved at least token regard.* Select quotations are taken from the October, 1923 work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, entitled, "The Festival," as featured in Weird Tales, Vol 5, No. 1, pp. 169-74, January 1925 from the public domain library at LovecraftLibrary.org. License has been taken in accord with the legal public domain status of the work and provided for your amusement - or alternately for your curiosity.
