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

New York City's Greenwich Village Halloween Parade could be the annual event of Greenwich Village. The parade was originated from the year of 1973. Initially it was only a simple idea came from a mask maker who is also a puppeteer Ralph Lee. At that time he took a few kids held a small Halloween parade in the community, and later it gradually developed into a large-scale activity throughout the village.

In the parade there are bound to have a event of large-scale puppet show, at the same time, the aim of the parade is hoping everyone are all participants rather than bystanders, so even if the person who originally were only want to act as a watcher, but when he or she entered in the village, he will soon to be invited to join the parade group and become part of them. In the following year, the New York Theater invited him to bring the idea to Main Street, then the annual parade began, and later the last week of October was been formally designated as "Halloweek".

Now, the New York’s Halloween Parade has attracted thousands of New York peoples and tourists each year, and the parade was held in Greenwich Village the teams began at about 7:00pm and started from the 6th Avenue & Spring, and till to the 6th Avenue & 23rd Street, the entire parade process will probably lasted more than 3 hours.

Among the big parade procession, you can see all sorts of exotic dresses and fancy costumes everywhere, even if the New Yorkers who have seen various stranges and bizarreries were also amazed by it. In addition, there are several giant puppets operated by a few peoples to show fantasy images corporeally. Finally, the parade route will extended to the most wild and crazy gay district in New York, and the streets and alleyways were become crowded with those cross-dressers who were all trying their best to playact, the scenery bought a perfect end to this crazy big gathering.





The visitor, no matter come from Asia, South America, Africa, Europe, even Middle East, could dressed himself up into a variety of characters or figures, and a piece of simple musical instrument could been bought along, for purpose of playing local and unique music impromptu for people, and to blend with endemic cultures without borders. In the views of those visitors who have never taken part in the activities of Halloween, not to mention such a wonderful parade, the Halloween parade is so novel and beyond interesting.

The Parade each year has a different theme, such as environmental protection, AIDS and so on. In 2002, for the reason of the event "9-11 terrorist attacks taken place in last year, Greenwich Village erected a statue of the phoenix which is ready to fly up, and used it as a symbol of the reborn after a baptism of fire of New York. This year's parade theme is "play”, and the parade fans all over the world must have been marched in New York with their tippy toes, let's wait and see.

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.