Halloween SVG – a modern international holiday, dating back to the traditions of the ancient Celts of Ireland and Scotland, whose history began on the territory of modern Britain and Northern Ireland. It is celebrated every year on October 31, the eve of All Saints’ Day. Halloween SVG is traditionally celebrated in Western Europe and America, although it is not an official day off. Since the end of the 20th century, in the course of the globalization process, the fashion for Halloween attributes has also appeared in most countries of Eastern Europe and the CIS. Halloween is celebrated informally in some other countries with close cultural ties to the United States or the United Kingdom, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, and a number of island countries in Oceania.
History
Historian Nicholas Rogers, who studied the origins of Halloween SVG, noted that, despite attempts to connect its origin with the Roman holiday Parthenaly (from parentes – parents), which was celebrated on February 13-21, the prototype of Halloween, most likely, It was only with the advent of the Celtic pagan festivities of Samhain, which lasted seven days – three days before and after Samhain on the night of October 31, a description of which appears in the old Irish literature since the X century. The name of this holiday comes from the old Irish word Samhain, which meant “the end of summer” and later became the Irish name of the month of November. Thus, the similarity of the Celtic and Roman festivals is rather connected with the common Indo-European origin of the Celts and the Latins.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Folklore, Samhain was a holiday for all the peoples of the British Isles at the same time and was firmly associated with death and the supernatural. At the same time, there is no evidence that in pagan times the feast was of any particular importance other than agricultural and seasonal. In 601, Pope Gregory I instructed missionaries not to fight pagan festivals, but to convert them to Christian holidays. By the 8th century, Samhain became the Day of All Souls and the Day of All Saints (November 1), on which it was considered acceptable to talk to the dead from the point of view of religion. This interpenetration of Gaelic traditions and Christian rites began to form the first rudiments of Halloween. Only two centuries after the establishment of All Saints’ Day (about 400 years after Ireland’s adoption of Christianity) – at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries – are the records of the monks showing a shift in the perception of Samhain towards the dark pagan holiday associated with death.
From now on, the continuity of the two holidays begins. Like Samhain, Halloween is traditionally celebrated on the night of October 31 to November 1. In Scotland and Ireland, Samhain was called Oidhche Samhna and Oíche Samhna (in Scottish and Irish respectively), and modern native speakers of Gaelic languages still refer to Halloween as Oíche/Oidhche Samhna. It is still customary in northern Scotland and Ireland to perform rituals to soothe the dead and to tell legends about ancestors on the night of October 31. The day after Catholic All Saints’ Day (November 2), the Day of All Saints is celebrated. In the Orthodox churches the celebration of the Day of All Saints falls on the first Sunday after the Holy Trinity Day.
Approximately in XVI century there was a tradition of begging for sweets on the night of October 31. Children and adults wore fabric masks and walked from one door to the next, demanding from the owners a treat and a shawl. The custom of wearing role-playing suits and carrying “Jack’s lamp” appeared only at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, and in exchange for money or food it was originally necessary to offer different entertainment. Subsequently, due to the mass emigration of Scots and Irish to the U.S., Halloween is also popularized there.