Happy Halloween VII: How to Make a Halloween Pumpkin Lantern?

How to Make a Halloween Pumpkin Lantern?

Steps 1. Cut

Cut a hole around the top or botton of the pumpkin (the size of the cutted hole should not be too large, but also not be too small to make your hand stretched inside and draw the pumpkin fleshes out

Tips: You should pay more attention on during your cutting and try your best to make the cut surface smoth and tidy.

Steps 2. Draw Out & Shaving Thin

Using a special spoon (a spoon for daily use also is fine) stretch into the pumpkin and draw out the seeds and fleshes of it. Then select a place on the pumpkin skin, on which you are ready for carving, and shave the pumpkin peel thin to about 1 inch thick.

Step 3: Paste Paper Face

Selected a place on the pumpkin and paste or tack the paper face you prepared before.

Tips: Please pay attention to put the tacks in accordance with the dotted lines of the paper face when tacking, thus to avoid producing small holes on the pumpkin skin.

Step 4: Carve and Draw along with Broken Lines

Follow the dotted lines of the paper face and using a small cone or a thumb pin draw out the face figure on the pumpkin skin, and torn down the paper face when finished.

Step 5: Seeing The Results

Finally, to see your results, and using a small cone to amend it point-to-point furthered. So a wonderful work has taken birth and just Picasso is hard to follow!

Happy Halloween V --- Halloween Parade(up part)

On October 31 each year, is the Halloween festival for demos and ghosts turning out in West, as the story goes that it is origin could been traced back to the fifth century BC, at that time the Celtic living in Ireland's agreed on this day as the end of the summer, and it also indicates the end of a year, they believed that on the eve of the alternation of a new year and old year, all laws of the time and the space will be suspended for the time being, and the door of the spirit world in this evening will open, thus make all ghosts had a opportunity to walk through the earth, and to find a suitable substitute which could help her to gain a reborn chance. So, as been afraid of becoming the goal of the ghosts, the Celtics put down the fire and to pretended that nobody were at home, at the same time, they wearing awful and ferocious masks and dressed into ghosts and demons walk along the street, hereby to produce a noisy and hubbub atmosphere in order to drive away those wandering ghosts and spirits.

Gradually, these customs have evolved into a celebration of young peoples today, in this evening everybody could disguised themselves to the top of their bent and enjoy a happy festival.

In the evening of Halloween there’s also a parade particularly in the New York City, in which a group of vampires, zombies, witches and Frankenstein and so on will appeared together at that night, and common citizens are also been welcomed to visit, all members no matter what age, sex, class or nationality, even if you are a coward, could join them to enjoy this hot and bustling carnival of ghosts and human beings.

In fact, these ghosts and spirits are all disguised by people, so it’s not terrible really, on the contrary, there are some small grimaced impersonators are very lovely and funny, among in them as if you had been attended in a large fancy ball.

In these various playacting roles, the witch and the corpse are the most played character selected by people, and to meet the demand, those shops who specially supplied Halloween products or decorations also have prepared for this group of Halloween costumes for sale.


At the same time, each year those manufacturers will launch masks and costumes in Halloween whose designs are based on the hottest figure in that year on the market, so that more people could be involved in the hot trend of this traditional western holiday, for example, the figure of small wizard in the movie Harry Potter has become a featured character that a number of children were bound to choose.

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Happy Halloween IV – A Holiday Loved by Children and Adults

Halloween is a best time for children indulged in fun. In the eyes of children, it is a festival full of mystery. As the night fell, the children are all hurried to put on their colorful make-up costumes and wear various ridiculous masks on and go out for playing, as well as carried with a "Jack's Lantern" .



The "Jack's Lantern" looks very cute and lovely, and it could be made out as following steps: Take a pumpkin and hollowed out it, then engraved smiling eyes and a big mouth on the outside, then put a candle in and lit it, so people could able to see this naive and smiling face faraway.
　　
When have dressed up fully, groups of children acted as various demons and ghosts and carried with "Jack lanterns", they ran in front of the doors of their neighbors and shouted threatened: "Trick or Treat", "Money or Eat". If the adults do not treat them with candies or small changes, those naughty children will keep their word: All right, No Treat, Just trick with you. They sometimes painted soaps on their door handles, and sometimes painted colors on their cats. These small pranks often made adults hilarious much. Of course, most of peoples are very happy to treat their innocent little guests. So on the eve of Halloween the children could always get a plump stomach and a full pocket back.

The most popular play on the eve of Halloween is "Biting Apples". In the game, people will put some apples floating in the water with a big basin, and then let the children to bite at these apples without using their hands, and the winner is the first one who bit an apple successfully.

In addition, to adults, Halloween is also a happy night could make the fantasies come to true. Lower Manhattan is no exception as New Yorkers turn out en masse to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. They come for the entertainment to see the parade's main playact - paper puppets bobbing above the crowds, and to indulge in an elaborate game of dress-up.
　　
Everyday rules are temporarily suspended and thousands of costumed New Yorkers parade in the streets without fear of being judged. Men in hats (and little else) walk alongside kazoo-playing old ladies. No one is worried by the bizarre or weird, because at the Village Parade, Halloween is a night when anything goes.
　　
Anything but crime, that is. Halloween, a night of mayhem in most other U.S. cities, is peaceful in Greenwich Village. The joyous spirit of the partygoers results in a night when crime is lower than on any other night of the year. This proves, in more ways than one, that Halloween is when one's wildest fantasies can come true for New Yorkers.

Happy Halloween II --- Halloween Customs (down part)

Jack’s Lantern

The "Jack’s Lantern" custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

The "Jack’s Lantern" looks very cute and lovely, and its could be bought out very simple: Take a pumpkin and hollowed out it, then engraved smiling eyes and a big mouth on the outside, then put a candle in and lit it, so people could able to see this naive and smiling face faraway, this is just the children's favorite toy on Halloween.

The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

Custom Tradition Review

In the most "haunted" night, all kinds of demons, pirates, witches and extraterrestrial visitors will turn out one after another. In the era before Christ, the Celtics have the custom of to hold a ceremony at the end of the summer to express thanks for the benefactions given by God and the Sun, diviners of the time will light up fires and apply witchcrafts to drive away the demons and spirits that wandering around.

Later, the custom of Romans that using nuts and apples to celebrate harvest was fused with the custom of Celtics on October 31, and In the Middle Ages, people were accustomed to put on costumes of animal designs, and worn terrible masks to drive away ghosts and demons in the night before Halloween. Although the Christianism had taken place of the Celtic and Roman’s religious activities later, these early Halloween customs have been kept down finally.

The Halloween we celebrate today includes all of these influences, Pomona Day's apples, nuts, and harvest, the Festival of Samhain's black cats, magic, evil spirits and death, and the ghosts, skeletons and skulls from All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day.

So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.

Today, children wear on a variety of Halloween costumes and masks jokingly to attend Halloween parties, and people has been familiar with the scene of various witches made of paper, black cats, skeletons and ghost figures hanging on the walls of the parties, also in front of windows and doors there are pumpkin lanterns with bare teeth and open mouths or formidable faces.

Happy Halloween II --- Halloween Customs (up part)

On the annual Nov.1 is the traditional Western festival of "Ghost Holiday" – Halloween, and Oct. 31 is the eve of Halloween, it usually known as the night before Halloween. But the atmosphere on this day is far from “horrible” as its name sounds.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outbuildings and unhinging fence gates.

The best known and featured custom of Halloween are just the two – fantastic ”Jack’s Lantern” and prank “Trick or Treat”.

Every time at the arrival of Halloween, the children are all hurried to put on their colorful make-up costumes, wear various ridiculous masks on and carrying a "Jack Light" walk from house to house and begging for holiday gifts.


Trick or Treat

The custom of trick-or-treat is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village and begging for "soul candies”, made out of square pieces of bread with raisins.

The more soul candies the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could speed up a soul's path to the heaven.

This is an important part in Halloween days on the dining table, you not only should ready for enough candies and cakes to entertain those naughty ”devilkins”, but also to deck out your table with elaborate care in this special day. Never to let your guests look down with you!

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Happy Halloween I - The Origin of Halloween

At first, let’s talking about the origin of word “Halloween”: a lot of nations on the eve of Halloween will held a celebration gathering, which also be called "All Hallow E'en", "The Eve of All Hallows", "Hallow e'en", or "The eve of All Saintas' Day ", and last evolved as a convention into "Halloween", in Chinese we call it “the night of Halloween”.

Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom come from? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?

In the Medieval Ages, the central Europe had a history of demolishing heathens, but the sacrifice ceremony before the New Year’s night has never been reclined indeed, and just appeared in the form of wizard. That’s why in today’s Hallowmas, we are still familiar with witch’s brooms, black cats and curses.

Halloween is one of the oldest holidays with origins going back thousands of years. The holiday we know as Halloween has had many influences from many cultures over the centuries. From the Roman's Pomona Day, to the Celtic festival of Samhain, to the Christian holidays of All Saints and All Souls Days.


Hundreds of years ago in what is now Great Britain and Northern France, lived the Celts. The Celts worshipped nature and had many gods, with the sun god as their favorite. It was "he" who commanded their work and their rest times, and who made the earth beautiful and the crops grow.

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.

One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.

Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.

The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

With regard to the origin of Halloween, the most referred legend viewed that Halloween was came from the ancient Western European countries before the birth of Christ, which mainly includes Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These ancient Western Europeans were also called Celtic or Druids. The date of Celtic or Druids’ New Year is on November 1, and in the New Year’s eve, young peoples in Druids were gathered in a team and worn various weird masks, carried carved radish lamps and wandered between villages.

The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.

Here is necessary to explain that the pumpkin lamp is a custom appeared lately, and there’s no pumpkin in ancient Western Europe. In fact, the Halloween is a ceremony that celebrated for the autumn’s harvest, and it also was said as a “ghost day", there’s a legend said that the souls of people who dead in the current year will return to visit the world, so live peoples should let the souls returned see the scenery of their successful harvest and give them an abundant feast. So all needfires and lamps were used to scare sway the souls of ghosts, and the same time to illuminate the return road for the ghosts and to guide them back.