Halloween is celebrated on the night of October 31st, mainly in countries of the Anglo-Saxon world. However, in recent years, it has begun to establish itself in Cyprus as well as Greece.
Colors associated with Halloween are black and orange. with the most characteristic symbol now being the pumpkin. Orange marks the autumn harvest, while, as a symbol of darkness, black recalls that Halloween was a festival marking the boundaries between life and death in the distant past. Because Greek farmers created the first scarecrows to protect their crops, the scarecrow as a symbol reminds people of the holiday's old rural roots.
The origins of Halloween date back 2000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. Celebrated on October 31st (Celtic New Year's Eve), the Celts lit bonfires and wore costumes to chase away ghosts because they believed that, on that night, the dead returned to earth. Later, streams of Irish immigrants from the mid-1800s brought Halloween to the US.
Ancient Celtic history brings to the fore evidence of pagan celebrations dating back more than 2 millennia. Samhain merged with All Saints' Day to become Halloween in the 9th century AD when Saint Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland. Before Christian influence, Samhain promoted stories about the living dead. One such story tells of a dead man returning from the underworld, putting people to sleep and burning them to death.
The "Book of Invasions" explains how, every Samhain, people from a village would sacrifice to the Formorians. The sacrifice included two-thirds of their children, corn and milk. The "Dindsenchas" and "Annals of Four Masters" connect Samhain with the deity Crom Cruach. Every Samhain, a firstborn child would be sacrificed to the deity.
Before today's pumpkin carving, the Irish used to carve scary faces into turnips meant to ward off evil spirits. There are claims that prior to these customs, some Irish pagans used human heads. Celtic warriors decapitated their enemies and placed the heads in their villages for protection from supernatural evil beings.
In the distant past, scary costumes were made for celebration using skin, bones and fur from slaughtered animals. In the 19th century AD, in Ireland, a man covered in a white sheet and holding a decorated horse skull used to lead a group of young men blowing cow horns from one farm to another.
This act of going door to door in disguise was thought to be the origin of the infamous trick-or-treating.