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In this episode we will be discussing the following:

Part 1  - History of Halloween

Part 2 - Halloween in the United States

Part 3 – Short Story / question & answer

Hi everyone, my name is David, and it is my goal to help you learn English faster. Learning to speak English is easier than you think, you just need to use the correct learning methods. Remember that you can always access the complete written transcripts for each podcast at learningenglishfaster.com.

Part 1 - History of Halloween

Halloween’s origins date back to an ancient Celtic festival, about 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the cold, dark winter. This was a time of year that was often associated with human death. The Celtic people believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.  On the night of October 31st, it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. To celebrate this event, people built huge bonfires, where they gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to their gods.  During the celebration, the Celtic people wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins. By the 9th century, the church established All Souls’ Day and people celebrated with big bonfires, parades, and by dressing up in costumes of saints, angels, and devils.  The night before it began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

Part 2 – Halloween in the United States

The first celebrations included in the United States consisted of “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, dance, and sing. By the middle of the 19th century, annual fall festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country. In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

Today, in the United States, American kids dress up in costumes and go house to house, knocking on doors and saying, “trick or treat?” Most houses prepare for the event and participate with a small, but delicious donation of candy. Houses are frequently decorated, and it is common to carve scary faces into pumpkins and make them into glowing jack-o-lanterns by putting a candle inside. One recent change is that many young adults are celebrating the pagan holiday. Today, over 70% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 dress up and celebrate Halloween, but instead of going house to house, they go from bar to bar or to Halloween parties.

Part 3 – Short story

Just listen and try to paint a picture of the story in your mind One Halloween night when I was about 12 years old, my friends and I decided to run around after dark and trick or treat for candy. After meeting my friends, and trick or treating around our neighborhood, we emptied our bags of candy at home, that is the candy we did not already eat. Then, we decided to try and get even more candy by going to a neighborhood on the other side of town. To get there, we had to cut through the woods. The woods were dark and creepy, so we told each other scary stories about monsters and devil worshipers. Then, we saw a bonfire flickering in the distance.  As we got closer, we could