The Halloween Dream – Information, Wallpapers, Icons & Other Resources
Halloween or hallowe’en is celebrated on the 31st of October every year. It is a secular celebration but many people have expressed strong religious implications in it. It has been derived from All Saints Day and Samhain, the Celtic festival. The colours orange and black and the jack-o-lantern are characteristics of this day. Reading scary stories, trick-or-treating, having bonfires, wearing costumes, playing pranks and watching horror shows are some of the activities that take place on this day.
Halloween gets its name from the phrase All Hallows’ Even. It is the eve of All hallows day or All saints day as it is now called and is marked by festivities and feasting. Earlier the lanterns were made out of turnips. The heads are considered the most powerful part of the body containing all the wisdom and knowledge a man can hold. It is associated with the act of head hunting. The Celts used the head to ward off superstitions. These days, in North America, pumpkins are used instead of turnips as these are much easier to carve and are quite easily available in the market. The imagery of the festival is a result of novels like Dracula and Frankenstein, British Hammer horror and American graphic horror. All these have resulted in the formation of a festival denoted by magic, the devil, the occult and monsters. Some of Halloween’s the trademarks characters are Vampires, witches, the Grim Reaper, the devil, werewolves, skeletons and zombies.
One of the activities seen on Halloween called trick-or-treating is very popular among children. Kids dress up in scary costumes and go to houses to ask for candy or sometimes money. The word trick refers to an idle threat of causing mischief in case they are not given candy. In some regions children put up a show to earn their treats. Costumes used on Halloween are said to be used to ward off demons. You might very easily see people dressed up as witches or zombies. Nowadays due to the influence of media, costumes of icons from television and pop culture can also be easily observed. The Celts believed that on the 31st of October, the boundary between the dead and the living disappeared. In such a scenario, the dead could easily damage to the living. The Celts used this day to slaughter livestock to save it for the winter season. They put the skeletons of the deceased livestock into bonfires and wore evil masks to pacify the dead.
Apart from the watching of ghost movies and the telling of horror stories, there are many other games and rituals associated with this festival. In earlier days, unmarried women were supposed to look into a mirror on Halloween night and the face of the person they would marry would appear in the mirror. However, a skull would appear if they were to die before getting married. One of the most common games seen at Halloween parties is apple bobbing in which apples are placed in a basin full of water and people are supposed to bite the apple with their teeth without using their hands. These are just some of the rituals followed on Halloween, it is a festival celebrated with great vigour and loved by all.
Furthermore, to help our readers we have collected some of the Halloween Scary Wallpapers, Halloween Icons and Other Resources.
Halloween Wallpapers
Halloween Icons
Halloween Resources
- Wallpapers – Halloween Illustrations (Halloween Haunts)
- Wallpapers – Halloween Graphic Illustraion
- Wallpapers – Happy Halloween
- Wallpapers – Wonder Wallpapers
- Wallpapers – wallpaperstock.net
- Photoshop Tutorials – Zombie Photoshop Tutorial
- Photoshop Tutorials – How to Create a Severed Arm
- Photoshop Tutorials – How to turn Tom Cruise into an alien
- Photoshop Tutorials – Horror Theme Text Effect
- Photoshop Tutorials – Good and Evil Photo Manipulation
Beautiful wallpapers and great resources of Halloween. Happy Halloween 2009.