it’s Halloween …

It’s scary, fun … and big business!

It’s nearly 31st October. The shops are full of pumpkins, creepy costumes and chocolate ghosts. It’s Halloween.

Halloween is more than 2,000 years old. Then, it was called ‘Samhain’. The people living in Britain then were Celts, and they were afraid of evil spirits. They believed that ghosts walked on earth, so they put on scary costumes to frighten them away.

Halloween is still very popular in Britain. Children and teenagers dress up in scary costumes and go ‘trick or treating’. They go out in groups after dark and knock on doors. The people in the house give the children sweets or chocolate. But if the people in the house say trick – the children can play a trick on them. They throw eggs or flour at the house.

Some people have Halloween parties too where they play Halloween games like ‘apple bobbing’. You have to pick up an apple from a bowl of water. Sounds easy? It isn’t! You have to do it with your teeth!

Halloween is big business too. According to Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, Halloween is the third biggest event in the UK (Christmas and Easter are first and second). Tesco expects to sell 1.4 million pumpkins, 2 million toffee apples* and 1.5 million scary costumes this week.

But not everybody is looking forward to Halloween. Many old people feel anxious. Others feel it’s an evil tradition and some schools have even banned it!

A toffee apple is an apple on a stick covered in caramel.

Do you celebrate Halloween? How?

Is Halloween ‘big business’ in your country? What about other traditions like Christmas? Do you think these traditions have become just another way for shops to make money?

Should Halloween be banned?