Ilda Vieira Vilela

Ana Beatriz Martinelli Magro

Daniel

José Helder

Halloween

São Paulo
2018
Ana Beatriz Martinelli Magro N°4

Daniel N°9

José Helder N°18

Halloween

São Paulo
2018
 Summary
1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4
2. He curious origin of Halloween ................................................................................................... 5
3. How did the party start?............................................................................................................... 5
4. When did Halloween come about? ............................................................................................ 6
5. How did the festival come to América? ..................................................................................... 7
6. What about modern Halloween? ................................................................................................ 8
7. How is it celebrated in the United States? ................................................................................ 8
8. Main Activities of Halloween in the United States (Traditions): ............................................. 9
9. Halloween in Brazil ..................................................................................................................... 10
10. Brazil ............................................................................................................................................ 10
11. March of the Zombies ................................................................................................................. 10
12. Oppositionists .............................................................................................................................. 11
13. Conclusão ..................................................................................................................................... 12
14. Bibliografias.................................................................................................................................. 13
 4

1. Introduction

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on October 31 here in Brazil and around the

world and is featured in films series books etc. This work contains the story of the
creation of this holiday and how it is celebrated in Brazil.
 5

2. He curious origin of Halloween

Halloween is known worldwide as a holiday celebrated mainly in the United

States where it is called Halloween. But nowadays it is celebrated in several other
countries in the world, including Brazil, where habits such as going door-to-door behind
sweets, decorating houses with "scary" props and attending fantasy parties are
becoming more common. But its origin has little to do with current common sense
about this popular feast.
Halloween has its roots not in American culture, but in the UK. Its name derives
from "All Hallows' Eve". "Hallow" is an old term for "holy", and "eve" is the same as
"eve." The term designated until the 16th century the night before All Saints Day,
celebrated on November 1st. But one thing is the etymology of its name, another quite
different is the origin of modern Halloween.

3. How did the party start?

Since the 18th century, historians point to an ancient pagan festival when it
comes to the origin of Halloween: the Celtic festival of Samhain (meaning "end of
summer"). The Samhain lasted for three days and began on October 31. According to
academics, it was a tribute to the "King of the Dead".
Recent studies point out that the Samhain had among its biggest brands the
bonfires and celebrated the abundance of food after the harvest season.
The problem with this theory is that it relies on little evidence beyond the time of year
when the festivals were held.
The celebration, the language and the meaning of the October festival changed
according to the region. The Welsh celebrated, for example, the "Calan Gaeaf".
There are points in common between this festival held in Wales and the celebration of
Samhain, predominantly Irish and Scottish, but there are many differences as well. In
the middle of the 8th century, Pope Gregory 3rd changed the date of All Saints' Day
from May 13 - the date of the Roman festival of the dead - to November 1, the date of
Samhain. It is not certain whether Gregory 3rd or his successor, Gregory 4th, made
 6

the celebration of All Saints Day mandatory in an attempt to "Christianize" the

Samhain.
But whatever their motives, the new date for this day made the Christian
celebration of the Saints and Samhain united. Thus, pagan and Christian traditions
ended up mingling.

4. When did Halloween come about?

The Halloween we know today took shape between 1500 and 1800.
Bonfires have become especially popular starting at Halloween. They were used in the
burning of the tares (which celebrated the end of the harvest in Samhain), as a symbol
of the course to be followed by Christian souls in purgatory or to repel witchcraft and
the Black Death.
Another Halloween custom was to predict the future - it was predicted the date
of a person's death or the name of the future husband or wife.
In his Halloween poem, written in 1786, Scotsman Robert Burns describes
ways in which a young person could discover who his great love would be. Many of
these rituals of divination involved agriculture. For example, a person pulled a cabbage
or a cabbage from the ground because he believed that its shape and flavor provided
crucial clues about the profession and personality of the future spouse.
Others included mouth-catching apples marked with the initials of several candidates
and reading walnut shells or looking at a mirror and asking the devil to reveal the face
of the loved one.
Eating was an important component of Halloween as well as many other
festivals. One of the most characteristic habits involved children, who went from house
to house singing rhymes or saying prayers to the souls of the dead. In exchange, they
received good-luck cakes that represented the spirit of a person who had been
released from purgatory.
Parish churches used to ring their bells, sometimes all night long. The practice
was so uncomfortable that King Henry the Third and Queen Elizabeth tried to banish
 7

it, but they could not. This ritual continued, despite the regular fines imposed on those
who did so.

5. How did the festival come to América?

In 1845, during the period known in Ireland as the "Great Famine," 1 million
people were forced to immigrate to the United States, bringing their history and
traditions together.
It is no coincidence that the first references to Halloween appeared in America
shortly thereafter. In 1870, for example, an American women's magazine published a
report describing it as an "English" holiday.
At first, Halloween traditions in the United States united common jokes in rural
Britain with American harvest rituals. The apples used to predict the future by the
British turned into cider, served along with donuts, or "donuts" in English.Corn was an
important crop of American agriculture - and eventually came with everything in the
symbology characteristic of American Halloween. So much so that in the early 20th
century, scarecrows - typical of corn crops - were heavily used in Halloween
decorations.
It was in America that the pumpkin became synonymous with Halloween. In the
United Kingdom, the most "carved" or carved legume was turnip, a type of turnip.
A legend about a blacksmith named Jack who managed to be smarter than the devil
and wandered like a living dead gave rise to the pumpkin luminaires that became a
mark of American Halloween, marked by orange and black.
It was in the United States that the modern tradition of "trick or treat" came
about. There is evidence of this in medieval play that used cabbages, but preaching
plays became a habit at this time of year among Americans from the 1920s.
The games could end up getting violent, as it did during the Great Depression, and
became popular after World War II, when rationing of food was over and sweets could
be bought easily.
But the most popular tradition of Halloween, of wearing costumes and
preaching scares, has nothing to do with sweets. It
came after the broadcast of War of the Worlds, by the English writer H.G. Wells,
generated a great confusion when it aired on October 30, 1938.
 8

Upon completion, American actor and director Orson Wells set aside his
character to tell listeners that it was all just a Halloween trick and compared his role to
dressing up with a sheet to mimic a ghost and give a scare in people.

6. What about modern Halloween?

Today, Halloween is the largest non-Christian holiday in the United States.

In 2010, it surpassed both Valentine's Day and Easter as the date when more
chocolates are sold. Over the years, it has been "exported" to other countries, among
them Brazil.
Since 2003, the same date has also been celebrated on Saci Day, the result of
a bill (LAW n° 2,479, in 2003) that seeks to rescue figures from Brazilian folklore, as
opposed to Halloween.
In its "modern era", Halloween continued to create its own mythology. In 1964,
a New York housewife named Helen Pfeil decided to distribute steel wool, dog biscuit,
and insect ants to children she thought were too old to play trick-or-treats. Soon, urban
legends of apples stuffed with razor blades and candy soaked in arsenic or
hallucinogenic drugs were scattered.
Today, the festival has different purposes: it celebrates the dead or the harvest
season and marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn in the northern
hemisphere. At the same time, it has been gaining new forms and given the opportunity
for adults to play with their fears and fantasies in a socially acceptable way.
It allows subverting social norms such as avoiding contact with strangers or
exploiting the dark side of human behavior. It joins religion, nature, death and romance.
Perhaps this is the reason for its great popularity.

7. How is it celebrated in the United States?

Since Halloween is not linked to any institution, the organization of the party
takes place in a decentralized way. Generally, it is the schools, clubs, families,
companies and groups of friends that organize and celebrate the date.
 9

The religious character was losing, over time, the relationship with Halloween.
Today, in the United States, the celebration is more linked to the world of play, fun and
socialization.
Halloween is also heavily exploited commercially in the United States. The sale
of costumes and objects related to the date causes to move the commerce of the stores
and companies related to the parties.

8. Main Activities of Halloween in the United States (Traditions):

- Trick or treat - Children dressed in traditional costumes (ghosts, mummies or

other scary characters) go from house to house ordering sweets and candy.
- Usage of typical costumes (scary) - people use these costumes at parties
promoted, generally, by schools and companies. The focus is on creativity, fun,
integration and socialization.
- Besides the clothes, the make-up of terror is also very present in the
celebrations of this date. The creativity of makeup artists is geared towards creating
characters that represent Halloween.
- Halloween Pumpkin (it's nicknamed Jack-o'-lantern) - involves a whole ritual
of buying the pumpkin, taking out the inner parts, carving a scary face and lighting a
candle in the night. Exhibitions and contests are held in several North American cities
to elect the most frightening or creative pumpkin. It is worth remembering that most
people in the United States do not do this for spiritual or religious purposes, but rather
as a traditional and cultural event.
- Visit to haunted attractions - many of these attractions are set up in amusement
parks or shopping malls.
- Tale of frightening stories - carried out mainly among friends or in bookstores.
- Typical Halloween games - one of the most accomplished is to fill a bowl of
water and throw apples inside. The apples are floating and the participants should pick
them up with their teeth (biting).
- Organization of festivities and fancy Halloween-themed dances.
- Watch movies or theatrical theatricals of terror.
- Lighting of fires.
 10

9. Halloween in Brazil

The celebration of Halloween is common in Anglo-Saxon-speaking countries

such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In Latin countries, the
celebration also happens, but in a more timid way. In Brazil, it is no different, the date
is called Halloween and passes almost unnoticed between the Brazilian celebrations.
The name that designates this celebration is inspired by the expression "All Hallow's
Eve", which means "Eve of All Saints," a reference to the date celebrated by the
Catholic Church on November 1. That is why Halloween is celebrated on October 31st.

10. Brazil

In an attempt to give new meaning to the date in Brazil, Law Project 2,762 of
2003 wants to institute the day of October 31 as Dia de Saci and his friends. Among
the justifications for the celebration is the incentive to local culture in a strategic,
purposeful and symbolic way. In Brazilian folklore, Saci is portrayed as a naughty boy,
a fact that can be associated with Halloween tricks. Even so, many Brazilians prefer
foreign traditions to celebrate Halloween.
Despite the great fervor of the Brazilians to celebrate the Day of the Dead, or
Finados, on November 2, we do not see the same expressiveness to celebrate
Halloween. It is very common to have demonstrations of that date in clubs and some
nightclubs, but nothing very significant.
However, the date is much celebrated in English schools, with activities geared
to the culture of countries that usually celebrate the date. Another common practice
among Brazilians is watching horror movies. Some television channels prepare a
special programming grid with this type of movie on Halloween week.

11. March of the Zombies

The influence of serials with plots involving the undead created in several parts
of the world an event that brings together several people with macabre fantasies. In
Brazil, the March of the Zombies, or Zombie Walk, began in São Paulo in the year of
 11

2006, and already happens in other Brazilian capitals, like Belo Horizonte, Goiânia,
Fortaleza and João Pessoa.
Although not originated in Halloween, the event ended up mixing with the
celebrations, because, in most capitals, it happens on November 2, the holiday of the
Finados. The march draws attention because some fantasies are scary. Participants
are in public places and anyone can participate.

12. Oppositionists

Many Brazilians criticize the influence of American culture in Brazil. In addition,

the country has a strong Christian tradition, which opposes this type of celebration,
because it is loaded with elements contrary to religious doctrine. In 2009, for example,
the Vatican released a story talking about "dangerous messages at the Halloween
party".
 12

13. Conclusão
 13

14. Bibliografias

https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2015/10/151029_origem_halloween_rb

https://www.suapesquisa.com/datascomemorativas/halloween_estados_unidos.htm

https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/halloween/halloween-no-brasil.htm