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Hi everyone. And welcome back to America Under the Microscope. Hi, James.

Hi,Lulu. Long time no see.

Yeah definitely. What are we going to talk about today？

Well, there is a holiday that's going to be coming around the corner real soon that involves monsters and other scary things.

One of our favorites, Halloween.

Yeah, Halloween is probably one of the most popular holidays in America where we do not have a day off from work.

But it's probably one of the funniest and most creative holidays in America, right？

I remember as a kid it was one of the holidays we looked forward to the most of a year.

OK, actually I was talking to Alan about witches, so in this whole Halloween season we're doing a few episodes. Let's talk about Halloween.

First of all, you know in Chinese it’s called万圣节, right？But that's actually not right？Because “万圣” is “all saints”, but All Saints' Day isn't it November the 1st？

All Saints' Day is November the first. Halloween is the 31st of October, so the day before. So it's the eve of All Saints' Day

嗯.所以其实Halloween应该是万圣节前夜. All Saints' Day is a Christian holiday.

Right. It's one of the Christian festivals entirely sure what it is about, but Halloween itself doesn't come from Christianity.

This I actually I think I know a little bit about.

It comes from an ancient Celtic holiday from Ireland called Samhain.

Em,就是凯尔特人的一个, so it's kind of, it's a pagan so to speak, pagan holiday.

Yeah, it is a pagan holiday about 2,000 years old.

What did they celebrate or have this holiday？

It was about basically people believed that on this day the worlds of the dead and the living become kind of blurred, and the dead can visit the living.

It's like our Ghost Festival or Ghost Month.

Yeah, kind of, it's quite similar to Chinese Ghost Month or Ghost Festival.

跟中国7月半差不多,就是中元节.But the whole thing about dressing up putting on like blood and all these things…masks on, I think I've read it somewhere, it's to disguise, it’s so that they would...

So yeah. So the ghost won't recognize you and haunt you and bother you. So it's also similar to the Chinese ghost festival where there are things you avoid doing, so you don't attract the ghosts. So it has a lot of similarities.

But is it also a bit similar to the Mexican Day of The Dead？

The American version of Halloween that we're going to be talking about does draw elements from The Day of The Dead. Because Mexico is America's neighbor, and there's a lot of people who have Mexican origin in the United States.

So we do pull elements of it, but The Day of The Dead in Mexico is much more about honoring relatives and ancestors.

They're gonna come back and visit.

They're gonna come back and visit. whereas Samhain you are trying to kind of avoid the ghosts.

I think our Ghost Festival perhaps has an element of both. You do believe your relatives your family members who have passed away will come back, but the nasty things will also come back. But let's talk about the American version. I think most people know Halloween is because all these really fun looking activities, and people would dress up.

Right. So the first thing most people think it was like this is a day we can dress up. And yeah, people get very creative with their costume. I mean if you look at small children, you'll probably see 100,000 Elsas or whatever other popular cartoon Disney character as these tend to be popular with children. Adults kind of get very creative with their costumes and they'll dress up in all kinds of different things, the standard witches, monsters.

And people even dress up to go to work on that day.

Depends on your office, but some companies some work will allow you to dress up for fun.

If you got a pretty creative or cool boss, I guess that can happen.

The other thing that I think most of our listeners know it's trick or treat, 就什么不给糖就捣乱.What is trick or treat, exactly？

The rhyme trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear.

I never heard of that.

That little rhyme kind of encapsulates this whole thing, trick or treating is when we go the people's homes, door to door, knock on doors kids say trick or treat. And then people will usually treat you.

Give you treat.

So they'll give you candy in your bag. So if they don't give you candy, some people will play tricks on the home. And not everyone does this, because it's technically illegal, and the police can arrest you if the owner is a party pooper, but common tricks would be things like throwing toilet paper onto their trees.

TP. So you TP someone’s house or so…

Mostly trees, for house would be a lot of work are throwing eggs on windows and things like this, or common tricks.

But this is mostly if they are not giving you candy.

Right. And it's not that common to do that because it is frowned upon even though that's what we say trick or treat, because nowadays when people go trick or treating, it's kids being watched by their parents, and the parent are not gonna let their children cause property damage.

That's true because they will be the one who are paying at the end of it. It’s usually parents as you can see usually parents and then they send their kids to knock on the door. It can be an interesting experience for the kids, and then usually whoever is coming to the door, they'll have candy chocolate ready for the kid.

So does that mean if your neighborhood is all doing trick or treats, even if you don't have kids, you have to prepare candy?

Well, some people do, not everyone. The general rule is in America, if you are willing to accept trick or treating, you would generally decorate your home slightly. I mean you don't have to go like crazy, but you have your lights on, and you might have somewhere that says Happy Halloween, so that way you know it's like they're probably participating; but it's the house lights are off, you see no decorations you avoid that house.

Because it looks like a real haunted house .

And it's likely they're not participating.

They're not participating, I know.

And then you also have Halloween parties?

Very common. So kids and adults have Halloween parties, even school will do Halloween events. For adults, it is time for adults to dress up and costumes, drink, eat and have fun.

To be childish, once in a year really.

To abandon all these responsibilities, a night to get silly. really.

You do see foods like spider cookies, eyeballs which are…

I've done that last year, I've invited you to my Halloween…

I remember yeah.

All right, and then the other thing is Jack-o-Lantern.

Yeah, actually one of my favorite parts of Halloween was carving Jack-o-Lanterns. So Jack-o-Lanterns are a pumpkin lamp, so you buy a pumpkin, you got the pumpkin, and then you cut out faces or things in the pumpkin. And you put a candle inside, light it and you put it out on Halloween to glow on things. So I always had fun making the faces and designing different things.

And that's also like a good activity like for parents and kids to do together or teachers and students to do together.

I don't remember doing that one in school because I don't think the teachers want to deal with the cleaning, but definitely parents and children.

It's also like kind of like a cute family tradition.

It's very very a family activity. It's a lot of fun. I always had fun memories of doing it.

OK, so we're gonna wrap up here. We've given you the basics about Halloween and I'm sure most of you already know that. In the advanced episode, we're going to talk about commercialization of the festival, and also the TV and movies.

Myth.

And myth and all that. So stay tuned. Thank you, James.

Thank you everyone. Thank you. Lulu. Wu~ Wu~

That's not scary at. All right. See you next time.

Bye,

Bye.