Текст про Хэллоуин на английском с переводом: 4 уровня - история, обычаи, где празднуют

Halloween is on the 31st of October. It is an autumn holiday. People celebrate it in Britain, Ireland, the USA and Canada.

On Halloween, children dress up. They are witches, ghosts, cats and pumpkins. Their costumes are black, orange and purple.

Families make jack-o’-lanterns. A jack-o’-lantern is a pumpkin with a funny face. There is a candle inside.

In the evening, children go trick-or-treating. They knock on the doors and say, “Trick or treat!” People give them sweets.

Children play games and eat apples and sweets. Halloween is fun! Happy Halloween!

Halloween is a holiday on the 31st of October. It is a very old holiday. It started in Ireland and Scotland more than 2,000 years ago. At that time, people thought that ghosts and fairies visited our world on this night.

Long ago, people in Ireland and Scotland made lanterns from turnips. Then many Irish families moved to America. There were lots of big pumpkins there, so people started to make lanterns from pumpkins. Today we call them jack-o’-lanterns.

Today, Halloween is popular in the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland and Australia. Children dress up as witches, vampires, superheroes and animals. They go from house to house and say, “Trick or treat!” Their neighbours give them sweets.

There are Halloween parties with games, too. In a popular game called apple bobbing, you try to catch an apple in a bowl of water with your teeth! The colours of Halloween are orange and black: orange for pumpkins and autumn leaves, black for the long, dark nights.

An ancient festival

Halloween began as Samhain (say “SOW-in”), a festival of the Celts, who lived in Ireland, Scotland and other parts of Europe more than 2,000 years ago. Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter. The Celts believed that on this night the line between our world and the world of spirits became very thin. They lit huge bonfires and sometimes wore disguises so that the spirits wouldn’t recognise them.

Where does the name come from?

Later, the Church made the 1st of November All Saints’ Day, which was also called All Hallows’ Day. The evening before it became All Hallows’ Eve, and little by little the name changed to Halloween.

Old traditions travel

In Scotland and Ireland, children went “guising”: they put on disguises and visited their neighbours, where they sang a song or told a joke and got fruit, nuts or coins. Lanterns were carved from turnips. In the 19th century, many Irish and Scottish people moved to North America and took their traditions with them. Pumpkins grew there and were much easier to carve, so the jack-o’-lantern became orange. Trick-or-treating became popular in the USA in the middle of the 20th century and later came back across the ocean to Britain.

Halloween around the world

Today Halloween is most popular in the USA and Canada, where people decorate their houses with pumpkins, paper bats and coloured lights. It is also celebrated in Ireland, where schools have a week’s holiday at the end of October, and in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. In many other countries, it is mostly a party for young people and for English classes.

Did you know?

In Britain, a black cat crossing your path is often thought to be lucky, but in many other countries people believe it brings bad luck. And some pumpkins grown for competitions weigh more than a tonne - as much as a small car!

An ancient festival

Halloween’s roots go back more than two thousand years to Samhain, a Celtic festival held at the end of October. The Celts divided the year into a light half and a dark half, and Samhain marked the beginning of the dark one. It was believed that on this night the boundary between the human world and the spirit world grew thin, so people lit bonfires on the hills and wore disguises to hide from any spirits passing by.

From All Hallows’ Eve to Halloween

As Christianity spread, the Church placed All Saints’ Day on the 1st of November; “hallow” is an old English word for a saint. The evening before, All Hallows’ Eve, was gradually shortened to “Hallowe’en”. In 1785, the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote a poem called “Halloween”, describing the games and fortune-telling of a Scottish country night.

Crossing the Atlantic

The holiday we know today was shaped as much in America as in Europe. In the 1840s, during a terrible famine, more than a million Irish people left for the USA. They took their customs with them, including guising and turnip lanterns. Pumpkins, which are native to America and larger and softer than turnips, soon replaced them. By the middle of the 20th century, trick-or-treating had become a national custom in the USA, and films and television later carried it back to Britain - although British children still ask for “sweets” rather than “candy”.

Halloween today

In the USA, Halloween is one of the biggest commercial holidays of the year: people spend billions of dollars on costumes, sweets and decorations, and some streets compete for the most impressive display. In Ireland, it is a real festival: children get a week off school, and families eat barmbrack, a fruit bread with small objects baked inside - finding the coin is said to bring wealth. The city of Derry in Northern Ireland holds one of the largest Halloween festivals in Europe, with parades and fireworks. In Britain, the excitement is shared with Bonfire Night, which follows on the 5th of November.

Not the same holiday

Many people confuse Halloween with Mexico’s Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) on the 1st and 2nd of November, but it is a different celebration. Families decorate their homes with bright orange marigolds, candles and photos to remember relatives who are no longer with them - in a warm and joyful way rather than a frightening one.

A holiday that keeps changing

Not everyone welcomes Halloween. Some people feel it has become too commercial, while others see it as a chance for neighbours to meet and for children to be creative. In Russia, it is not a traditional holiday, but many teachers of English use it to bring the culture of English-speaking countries into the classroom. Whatever you think of it, Halloween shows how a festival can travel across centuries and oceans and still keep changing.