We do Halloween because it's fun, mostly for kids and teenagers, but it's also a chance for adults to cut loose too. Halloween is any excuse for a party.
Speaking of "cutting loose" and "gay" stuff, for half a century Halloween in San Francisco has featured a sexual fetish party, clothing optional. The venue has changed but this year it's at what is probably the city's largest remaining "sex club" (there used to be many, gay and straight, but HIV/AIDS kind of ended that).
I was and the US Coast guard session and the Caribbean islands and we dealt with witchcraft to do down there that is so horrific and how when they celebrate they do sacrifices yes children and grown ups are sacrifice on the Halloween I work at all fortunate in America and South Carolina and I'll tell you right now there's so many murders and sacrifices on Halloween it comes from the roots of druids and they would wear costumes to try to hide from demons that they thought were walking the earth and they would trick or treat it came from asking them either to hand over one of their slaves for sacrifice or they would give them a treat if they did hand them over this guy is a total liar it's evil if you're a Christian a true Christian you know about this stuff and you know that is nothing nothing about this holiday is good not one single thing it's about death celebrating death and I would never let my children even though I used to trick or treat I would never let my children somewhere hell if your Christian and love God you know how much God hates this holiday you wouldn't even believe it children are God's treasure and more kids are sacrificed on Halloween any other time I'm telling you this as an military better and walking law enforcement so you better wake up
Its my impression that europeans in general and the english in particular are much more likely to throw "fancy dress" or costume parties. In the US, Halloween is pretty much it. I like costume parties and if I were to have a costume party in May, people would think its weird.
@MichaelJohnson-vi6eh America has themed parties where you dress up as characters of a movie or TV show. An occasional historical themed party where you dress up as your favorite historical figure. I remember the annual toga day at high school where all the kids would wear homemade togas to school. Not to mention "Rocky Horror Picture Show", This is a music. Comedy that played in Movie theaters for almost 30 years. I was never at one of these, but I heard they were quite raucous and costume laden. It's probably more common in Britain to have a random costume party but it's not unusual enough to be considered weird in America.
You’ve gotta come to the states in the Fall sometime and go to a farm and pick out a pumpkin to carve, and drink apple cider, and check out people’s Halloween decorations. Some people decorate their houses as big for Halloween as for Christmas. Picking out a pumpkin and carving it into a Jack O’Lantern makes me feel so nostalgic for when I was a kid. Once we’d removed the pulp, we’d roast the seeds for a little pumpkin carving snack.
The video is absolutely right about why the pumpkins became a symbol of Halloween. They are one of the harvest items we have available for harvest and their color is perfect.
The Day of the Dead is an extension of Halloween. Halloween being All Hallows or All Saints Eve and the next day being All Saints Day OR what it is called in Mexico, The Day of the Dead.
Canadians absolutely celebrate Halloween and have done so since the late 1800's. Also, this man's accent is fairly heavily Canadian. It's been said that those from the UK and Europe have difficulty distinguishing it from the American accent. I wonder if the host of European Reacts can(?)
If you watch the movie 'Meet me in St. Louis', you'll see a Halloween segment that shows how Halloween was celebrated in 1900's. Very different from these days.
No, as a Canadian, I find him annoying bcs he says aboot knowing that it is not pronounced like that by Cdns - -he's trolling you. We say ABOUT which rhymes with out (not aboot and oot). Never have I ever in my 70 years heard a Canadian say aboot. We are not scottish.
It is well-known AND documented why trick-or-treating began. Early 20th Century Halloween in the US was a night of teenagers playing pranks on their neighbors. Knocking over outhouses, soaping windows, stealing gates were all pranks played. President Franklin Deleno Roosevelt was the one who moved the holiday towards handing candy out to stop some of the damage done on Halloween. The candy was given out to as an alternative to pranks, thus trick OR treat.
Latin Catholics, yes. We Eastern Catholics celebrate All Saints Sunday on the First Sunday after Pentecost, and we have five All Souls Saturdays in the Spring.
Same with Lutherans. How this canuck didn't express "all saints' day" even in the context of "all hallows' eve" which is just an antiquated way of saying the exact same thing, is beyond me. Must be all the maple syrup.
@@JeffreyDick-x6g November 1, February 2, May 1, and August 1 are cross-quarter days that mark the midpoint of the season. It's natural that they have holidays. August 1, Lammas, isn't really a thing in the US but I guess it has some significance in Ireland and the UK.
Jack-o-lanterns are simply what we call the carved pumpkin. Halloween is the number one kid holiday. It’s just fun. Happy Halloween from Indiana my friend.
The christian angle is also why Mexico has a lot of influence over Halloween in the USA. A native celebration of dead ancestors was blended with the catholic All Saints Day into "Dia de los Muertos" and that is an increasingly big part of the decorations and festivities for Halloween in many parts of the USA.
For me, I don’t mind your pauses. I love learning about other cultures. As well, since I’m not able to travel to other countries, it makes me feel like I’ve made a trip to Portugal. We in America do love the the kids going door to door and seeing their costumes and give out candy. We get disappointed when not many children come by.
So true! We didn't get many trick-or-treaters this year, and I could tell it made my mom sad (yesterday's rain kept them away, I think). I love when he pauses to tell us about differences between Portugal and the US or other countries. :)
@@Michele-z4k there are other countries I'd love to go to, and financially my boyfriend and I could probably afford a few trips in our remaining lifetime (we're in our 50's.) But planning travel is sometimes exhausting to me. Flying is tiring, even if only a few hours flight, there's all the time waiting at the airport, and because I get motion sick. I'd love to go to the cherry blossom season in Japan, but I'm kind of doubtful I could handle a flight that long.
@@xzonia1 we had sleet and snow in Minnesota on Halloween. On the Tuesday before Halloween, it was 80° F! Even at 3am on Wednesday morning, it was still 75.
@ I hear you. My daughter went to Japan. She absolutely loved it and didn’t want to leave. When we met her when she arrived home she was sobbing. We were worried something bad had happened. She said no. She was crying because she didn’t want to come home. From the East Coast it’s a 20 hour flight. She got a Korean Air flight out of Los Angeles. She said they were so nice, the amenities were fabulous and she felt as comfortable as being in a recliner in her living room.
At the end of October, we in the northern hemisphere feel the nearness of death and subsequently the spirit world because things in nature are reaching the end of their life cycle all around us. As another commenter has already mentioned, Mexico celebrates "The Day of the Dead" which goes back to pre-Christian Mesoamerican culture around this time of year. The Latin American community still makes altars to honor their ancestors and beloved dead, many of them in front yards so the public can come pay their respects, in Chicago where I live. They also make skull-shaped sweets that are traditional for Day of the Dead, which may have had some influence on Halloween candy. I've been told that in Scotland and Ireland they would carve scary faces into turnips on Samhain, following the same logic as many ancient cultures that scary things would actually scare evil spirits away. They believed that since the spirits were about, they had to take protective measures against evil and unwanted spirits in addition to honoring and welcoming the spirits of the dead. When this custom came to America, pumpkins were used to carve scary faces into because they were much bigger and easier to carve. That's what I've heard, anyway. So that's an interesting example of how American Halloween is really a combination of Scottish/Irish Samhain + the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Ancient primitive superstitious folks “felt” the spirit world (something the senses could never detect) before we knew what electricity, bacteria, fungus, the Golgi apparatus, or gasoline was. Not sure any intelligent, morally solid adult in the 21st Century would make such silly claims, though.
As a Pagan, I can tell you that the differences between the Holiday Halloween and the religious celebration of Samhain differ. Halloween is a party, dressing up, taking kids to get candy, then the adults get to have their pary. Haunted houses spring up all over the place, haunted hayrides. Carved pumpkins on every house in some places, giant plastic skeletons, tombstones in the front yard, even a few ghosts. Samhain is the final harvest, the time when all the food should be in, canned, or in the cellar for winter. It's also the time when the Veil Between the Worlds is thinnest and old friends and family can come to visit if they would like. Some groups put out a "dump place" at thee table for those who want to share a meal with us. We will usually set our circle 9clean the ritual spot and sprinkle salt water, smudge with incense, and ask the elemental spirits in to guard it. We invite the God and Goddess in to the celebration. We sit at dinner and remember our ancestors, it's a time to tell the stories of those we've lost, especially in that year. After dinner, practical gifts can be rechanged things like a new bowl, a box of incents, cards, or a necklace and nothing largely extravagant, it's with love you are passing. Friends of ours gathered and we had our handfasting Samhain night 1993. This is the Pagan/wiccan wedding ceremony. We pledged our love, exchanged rings, and had our hands bound by a rope we braided together. As long as that knot lasts, the story is that the marriage will last. Seems to have worked in our case, 31 years. What we didn't know is that our priestess could have signed the legal papers for the wedding as clergy so we had to go do it again in front of a Justice of the Piece on November 11 to get it final in the courts. But we celebrate the official one as October 31. The circle is closed, the elements and dieties present are invited to stay or go as they will, then it's over. Howdays we go out to dinner on Halloween night for our anniversary. It's a nice change of pace for us I still consider myself Christian, but I also see the necessity for the balance of a priestess. I've had some talk s with my priest and he's okay with it. We've not taken anything away, we've merely added to it.
Also, I'm interested in American history and my understanding of the "trick or treat" aspect is that it was common knowledge in the early 20th century that on this night, teenagers would roam about and ask for treats from door to door. It was known that if you did not give a treat, you could be pranked that night by a trick. Things became quite wild and in an effort to calm this down, society began purposely directing this holiday into a more controlled experience for younger children. A great classic movie to watch that highlights an early trick or treat experience is the move "Meet Me in St. Louis" with Judy Garland. A very entertaining family friendly movie to watch. I highly recommend it. Especially since you enjoy all things American.
Back in the 1930s my mother lived in a small town with few street lights. They would carry handled paper mache pumpkins with little candles so they could as they went around the neighborhood trick or treating. Also, perhaps candy started being given out to persuade the kids not to prank their house. There is a line in an old kids song with lyrics of “trick or treat for Halloween. Better treat us right, or overnight, your little White House turns green.” Halloween in the 1960s was magical. We had so much fun and it was rare to find a house not decorated and giving out candy.
October 31st to November 2nd are religious days still celebrated here in the states....its said that during these days is when the veil between this world & the spirit world is the thinnest so its easier to communicate with spirits....check out the history & celebration of Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico which has a deep connection to that part of Halloween
Almost seems exaggerated. Do Canadians pronounce scheduled the same way they do in the UK, that surprised me. Honestly, this guy seems to be kind of full of himself.
Something I think you’d like reacting to is a Cornfield pumpkin patch. It is a fall attraction that focuses on the Harvest aspect of October (and September and November, but I’ll explain why I emphasize October) that has various little seasonal activities, but two main activities are a big corn maze (literally a maze of corn), and a more family focused activity of picking out fresh pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. It’s the perfect activity that leads into Halloween because you would go there to have some fun (kinda like a seasonal carnival in a sense) and then before you leave you would go and grab a few pumpkins with your family. Then when you carve them for Halloween they would usually last just long enough to begin rotting during early November, so you would them clear your Halloween decorations and put up your Thanksgiving stuff up.
I grew up in St. Louis Missouri (the intersection of the midwest and the south). It was a local tradition to tell jokes when you went trick or treating. Who ever had the best joke got extra candy. It was a huge shock when i moved away (chicago) and found out the jokes werent a huge part of trick or treating
I'm 57, born and raised in Canada. I dont say aboot nor have I ever heard anyone say it. I say about..."out" just like it's spelled. That being said, I've never lived in Eastern Canada so maybe it's an East thing. I can't speak on that.
It also meant light of heart, happy. I immediately think of a mother in a 1940s(?) film telling her daughter she wants to find a man who is gay for a good, lasting relationship.. Also, the book title Our Hearts Were Young And Gay. A fun book, incidently. I miss using the word as we did decades ago. Diane, using Joe's tablet.
@@carriemaxwell417Probably because if she would have used the word some group of people would have been offended by the word. Or, perhaps she thought UA-cam would censor or give her a strike. I’ve had it happen myself. Sometimes you just can’t win. Use a word, don’t use a word. Someone is always offended by something. If I was easily offended, I would have been offended when Biden called me “garbage”. Or, being referred to as a Karen simply by being born a white woman. Or, considered “privileged” or “r*cist” because I’m Caucasian. Yeah, ok. I could list another ten examples. It’s just not a hill I’m going to climb. Not using this word doesn’t seem like a hill worth climbing either. It certainly wasn’t derogatory, hateful, mean spirited, condescending, dismissive, bullying, etc. All of which would have been offensive. Some things are worth fighting for, words aren’t one of them in my humble opinion. Just my thoughts, opinion and perspective which of course, mean nothing to anyone. I acknowledge that and I’m okay with it. I’m no better or less than anyone else. ✌️
I personally love the day of the dead traditions as well as Halloween. If you haven’t seen the movie Coco you should. It a beautiful movie and it’s day of the dead theme is great.
JJ is really interesting. He's very thoughtful, and his opinions are well thought out. He's well worth the subscription! His videos are very informative.
One of our towns traditions is to have a race. People either grow or buy a GIANT pumpkin (a couple hundred pounds). They hollow it out and then the adults paddle/race each other across the towns central "pond". The winner makes it to the other side, the losers sink. It's fun for all!!!
Pranks were the original antics of costumed kids-- literally, Trick or a Treat-- came about as a kind of bargain with the little devils! Pass out treats and they'll leave your footbridge alone and go pick on your neighbor! This was in my mother's era (1930's/40's). By my time (Boomer here), we roamed freely as far as our feet could take us and hauled home massive pillowcases of candies-- that pretty much lasted until Santa came! 😁
I work overnight as a sergeant and was off for Halloween. I got approal from my way higher up (Warden is a hint) to dress up and pass out treats for my oncoming shift and 2nd shift leaving. These are grown adults who were like kids again. My immediate supervisor didn't even know this was happening. Just seeing my coworkers smiling, joking around, and having a good time ment the world to me.
Europeans in general, carved faces into things they had available, particularly produce, and it worked especially well with produce that is different inside than on the surface (so e.g., potatoes, apples), because all you have to do is carve away the peel in a pattern. They brought this with them when they came over to America. The reasons why Americans eventually settled on pumpkins specifically are not entirely clear, but there are several likely factors. First of all, pumpkins are common here, very easy to grow if you have plenty of space, and have been widely cultivated for a long time, probably because, in general, America has always had more land per capita than Europe. Second, pumpkins are relatively large, so you can do a fairly detailed carving, and it can be seen from some distance. Pumpkins can also be quite eye-catching just in general, and they ripen relatively late in the season, so they tend to be abundant right around the time that the fall holidays are celebrated. (This is also why e.g. pumpkin pie is associated with American Thanksgiving.) Also, the range of colors that leaves turn in the fall became closely associated with autumn decorations, and orange pumpkins fall right into line with that. They're also soft and easy to carve, so you can let children do it when they're too young to handle a really sharp knife. And some cultivars of pumpkin, including the ones most commonly used for carving, are relatively easy to hollow out entirely, which lets you do things like put a candle inside, and it shines out through the holes; that's a lot harder to do with a potato or turnip.
Halloween has always been a huge thing in my life and still I'm now 65 years old and continue to use costumes to celebrate Halloween this year i was photographed over a hundred times where i work and even more while taking my grandson out trick & treating lord willing I'll be doing it next year.
My mom told me that “trick or treat” came from asking for a treat so you didn’t do a trick to that house. She was born in 1926 so she grew up when trick or treating was starting. Makes sense to me.
I don’t know a particular video to suggest, but you may enjoy learning about the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration- which dates to pre-Colombian traditions of the Aztec empire.
Halloween was brought over from immigrants coming to the United States. The Irish and Scottish used to celebrate the end of the harvest. (Samhain Oct 31- Nov 1) They had big, huge bonfires and took a piece of coal from the bonfire to relight their fireplaces in their homes. The coal was put in Turnips that they carved. When they came to the US pumpkins were used instead. There is quite a lot more involved, but I have known what Halloween is about since I was a child now 60. So, the person you're watching may not have it quite correct for all of us from the United States of America. Just wanted to say my opinion.
Yes, the Scotch -Irish and Irish probably brought it here as a celebration before the more somber All Saints Day and All Souls Day on November 1rst and 2nd. It also has ties to harvest festivals, but since the US has changed from an agricultural to manufacturing nation, only pumpkins as Jack-o-lanterns have really lasted. This ties into folk tales about Headless Horsemen like Washington Irvings tale of Sleepy Hallow. Other scary stories from the romantic era like Frankenstein and Dracula later became part of our scary monsters we like to dress as at Halloween. The Aztec practice of celebrating your ancestors on Dia los Muertos was changed by the Catholic Church to be celebrated as fall becomes winter on All Souls Day. This in the Southwestern part of the country has extended Halloween to that day lately as the Hispanic population has grown. (San Antonio Texas has the largest celebration for Dia los Muertos in the US) Trick or Treat came about really as an acceptable bribe to not do anything to my house. Parties have started to come back even for children as fears of pins in candy or poison even have grown. In an infamous murder case in the 70s, a father killed his children using poison Halloween candy. But adults are getting into celebrating in as well as children with elaborate costumes and nostalgia of their childhood days of candy and Charlie Brown on TV.
The monster stuff isn’t just post war stuff like vampires and count Dracula a.k.a. Vlad III, commonly was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death in 1476/77. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. He got the nickname from his love for impaling his enemies on stakes. Sounds familiar oh vampire and stakes. And even in the early days people thought you were vampires victim they would lock cage around your burial site so that you didn’t come back. And there’s been a lot more. Like the bells on graves in case you are get buried alive. So it’s not just a post war thing
Have you ever thought about reacting to a native American Pow Wow, Such as "Experience America’s Largest Powwow | Short Film Showcase. I think you would really enjoy this and you will learn a bit about the people that was on the land before any european ever landed on this land.
When I was a kid, in the Detroit area, we used to trick or treat by saying: Help the poor My pants are tore Give me some money To buy some more... My father remembered doing this back in the late 1920s and early 1930s
As an American, I clicked this video because I don't know why we like Halloween. Also, this guy is EXTREMELY CANADIAN based on his accent. So he probably isn't the best source.
I actually really really love educational videos like this, there are a lot of things that us Americans do not know actually and to connect it with your country’s holidays and traditions especially with what is celebrated currently is definitely interesting and good to know!!!! I like putting these things together to make better sense of the origins 😊
Howling is nothing more than a satanic holiday with women and children are sacrificed to Satan a military veteran and US Coast guard and I dealt with these kind of people down in the Caribbean islands when voodoo and also in America with Satanism Satan at church there's nothing good about Halloween whatsoever
Halloween is my favorite night of there. There is so much joy and it's so wholesome to see the children get excited to dress as their favorite characters and receiving treats from their neighbors. It is just so wonderful and the night is filled with happiness for my family.
My daughter had a great time. We skipped school to visit Hubers Orchard to pick apples and get more pumpkins for her, and my husband got him some boy their whisky, I got blueberry wine, and we all got pumpkin donuts. We came home, and she and her dad made their Jack-O-lanter while I made some apple pies. Later, after dinner, she got ready and transformed herself into Wednesday Adams, and we took her trick or treating. My husband is Mexican, so we are also celebrating Day of the Dead, so we have up the ofrienda for his dad, and later, we will head to downtown Louisville 4th Street live for festivities.
I’m sure if you watch his other video he explains but yeah pizza is traditionally made with a tomato sauce and tomatoes are native to the Americas. So pizza was an invention of Italian-American immigrants
Tomato's are from South America, not the USA. Spaniards brought them to Europe from Mexico. Italy got some around 1544 and thought they were a form of eggplant. The Spanish colonists introduced them to Asia. By 1820 they were grown in England and Germany but not eaten there, since they thought they were poisonous, in spite of knowing Italians and Chinese used them in their cooking. South Carolina probably grew the 1st tomato's in the States in the mid-18th century and Thomas Jefferson ate them while in Paris and brought seeds back with him.
November 1 is All Saint's Day aka The Festival of All the Saints in the Roman Catholic holy days calendar. The vast majority of the holy days in the Catholic calendar coincide with the Pagan holy days. They may be a few days before or after the Pagan holy days, but they are very close. Samhain is the time during the dying of the year when the veil between the worlds thins and other worldly beings can slip into this world and contact us or we can contact them. Many of the customs of Hallowe'en are rooted in those earlier Pagan customs.
Halloween was a big deal for my family as a kid. Carving pumpkins on the kitchen floor. My mom would spread out newspaper and we just went for it. 7 kids in my family sooo. Lots of pumpkins on the front porch. We'd go "Trick or treating" and mom would have hot cider with cinnamon sticks waiting when we got home. (Drink cider and sort out candy) So much fun! Happy Halloween 🎃👻
Halloween is very complicated. It's a mixture of traditions from a lot of places around the world. I always just found it fun, dressing up as anything you wanted to. The last time I went out in costume was as a black cat. A lot of people don't celebrate the trick or treat part anymore because of child safety. Quite a few years back the malls or small town shops were frequented by trick or treaters because parents considered it safer. People also throw parties where everyone comes in costume. I think it all depends on what part of the country you live in and also whether you live in suburbia and an urban area.
Oh yeah we still bob for apples. lol put apples in a huge huge bucket or pot and try to get apples out with your mouth. It’s a party festival type of thing. And caramel covered apples are popular as a sweet 😊
Dia de los Muertos images have infiltrated pretty heavily into Halloween, at least in Southwestern states, and probably beyond. Target and other stores include Day of the Dead costumes, house decorations, bakery items, and more. It's becoming common to wear sugar pumpkin design face paint for Halloween or include calaveras in yard displays.
america use to really love holloween, it was a big deal till about 2015 or so, it is still done but not nearly as much as it use to be. when i was a kid. the americans carried the tradition to Holland. i remember the first year it was celebrated, the dutch had no idea what we where doing and asked.. it caught on big time with the dutch and many of them adopted it as one of their own.. the dutch are really cool people. =)
We still do. Where do you live? Every place I have lived and or visited it is still big. Maybe you are talking about kids walking around to Tor T.. Adults have taken it over to house parties, bars and festivals BIG time.
Happy Halloween Andre (though it's probably Nov. 1 now where you are). Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday! I grew up in a theatrical family in Salem, Mass (your favorite state to say, so you can say "Mass" to make it easier)... we used to do Halloween up huge in the 1970s when I was a kid. I still love it, but my nieces are all grown now, except for my grand-niece but she lives in Europe and doesn't celebrate. When she is a teenager, I'll fly her to the US for a Halloween celebration. That's what I did with her mother when she was 15 and she fell in love with the holiday. I'm older now, so for me, I'm just watching my favorite Halloween movies and eating candy corn haha!
Love how much I learned from this video! I’ve heard before that the scary faces we carve into pumpkins (or turnips back then) were meant to scare away evil spirits
I live in Oklahoma and I enjoy your videos, you say you love America so in order to really learn of this place I think learning about the first people would be a place you should visit. Here in Oklahoma their is a large population of first people and the pow wows are open to all people so I hope you will watch a video or two about these people. They are like no other in the world and I know you will enjoy learning of a people and culture that is new and fantastic
As November 1st is All Saints Day and most Holy, ancient people believed evil beings were more active on October 31st. They would carve root vegetables and light them to scare the evil spirits away.
@@ksborder you have some of the weather we had in Minnesota on Tuesday. High in the low 80's. It was still 75 at 3 in the morning!!! Then the temp started dropping, and by Halloween we had the 30's & 40's, with sleet and snow. There was a Halloween in the early 2000's, that when I took my little niece early trick or treating, it was in the 60's and I went in just a tshirt and pants!
You know, he's right about pizza. When I was in Italy, everyone was perplexed about what I thought pizza was. They had something they called pizza, but it had crust on both bottom and top.
Halloween is the best... All coutries do it a bit different... But a night if fun amd remembering the dead and remembering that we are all mortal. . Its cathartic and fun... I DO think Americans do it best even if its a lil commercial. BUT we get into it more than anybody except maybe Mexico / South America
It’s funny how you mentioned Portugal has its own version of “Halloween” cause our neighbors in Mexico has their own celebrations called “The Day of the Dead” aka Dia de los Muertos, on November 1 & 2 but it’s basically honoring the dead.
The Chinese celebrated hungry ghost month so celebrating the dead is a very old tradition for all humans, no matter where you are in the world. Native Americans culture is very old and only past down by the elders so I wouldn’t know if they celebrated Halloween but I do know they are very honorable to their ancestors and can respect that.
I have close to 400 Trick or Treaters every Halloween! It’s so much fun to see all the different costumes, both the little kids and adults! They are always so friendly and polite.
My father was older, born in the 1910s. Treats were given to prevent tricks (or “damage”) like tping, cars and houses being egged, windows being soaped, jack-o-lanterns smashed, etc. He would periodically respond to trick or treat with “trick”. The kids were stumped because they didn’t have a trick planned and didn’t know about that part.
The giving of "treats" also has religious significance. The treats equal to offering food and gifts to dead friends and relatives to keep their souls at rest. Other offerings were made to bad spirits to keep them away.
ps, I believe Canada does indeed celebrate Halloween. As much as they'll dislike the notion, in almost every important way Canadians are culturally American.
Halloween is Christmas without all the stress. You can decorate or not, and the only present(s) you have to buy is candy or inexpensive trinkets to hand out to people dressed in “costumes” who come begging at your door.
Halloween ultimately goes back to European harvest festivals in pre-Roman times, yes. But, by the time it was brought over to America, it's association with harvest had been almost entirely lost. By then we were calling it, "Halloween", which, yes, is a reference to the next day being All Saints Day, a medieval Roman Catholic holiday. The eve of a holiday (or of any day) is the evening _before_ because of the influence of various ancient cultures that started the day at sundown, e.g., ancient Israel. (To this day, among practicing religious Jews, the weekly Sabbath starts on Friday evening and runs to Saturday evening.) Numerous ancient cultures started each new day either at sunrise or sunset, or sometimes at dawn or at dusk. Most modern cultures start the day at midnight, principally due to the influence of Rome, which has had a very large impact on calendar practices worldwide. Rome is also responsible for numbers of days in each month that almost everyone uses now, and for the leap-year formula, among other things. However, the seven-day week and the 24-hour day are much older. I *think* Canadians celebrate Halloween quite similarly to Americans? Perhaps not quite as much? I know their Thanksgiving is on an earlier date, in October, so Halloween may fall more into that shadow of that for them and thus get less attention than it does in America? (For Americans, it's the biggest holiday between Labor Day in early September and Thanksgiving in late November.) But apart from that, I think their Halloween traditions are mostly very similar to ours. The Roman Catholic church is the #1 international poster child for syncretism, i.e., for taking whatever local culture or religion exists in any given area, putting your own spin on it, and turning it into part of your religion, so that it becomes something the locals can comfortably adopt. This is precisely how All Saints' Eve became a thing in the first place. It's also where we get the modern date for Christmas, and the English-language name of Easter, among other things. (The Portuguese name for Easter comes, very indirectly, from the Hebrew for Passover; the date for Easter is canonically the Sunday after Passover, although there are several distinct traditions for exactly how to calculate where that lands on the modern Gregorian calendar in any given year. In antiquity, generally there was someone in charge of deciding when to insert intercalary months; the idea of establishing a fixed formula for this, is credited to Julius Caesar's desire to be away from the capital at that time of year for reasons involving his military career; but Caesar's formula is too Roman to work for the Hebrew calendar, so when people who used the Roman calendar started wanting to know the dates of Jewish holidays, they had to work out how to reconcile that, and different people came up with different rules for it.)
Halloween is a religious holiday called all Hallows eve. Where you dress up so the ghosts or demons don't find you because the next day is All Saints Day if you're catholic
@necrogenesis1981 yes a lot of Halloween comes from those traditions. While they carved turnips, which is difficult to say the least, I'm glad someone chose pumpkin
The early popularity of skeletons likely had to do with the beginnings of modern medical science in the Victorian era when there were body snatchers who were stealing corpses and selling them to various institutions for study after which a portion of them ended up as skeleton displays in class rooms. He is also ignoring the impacts of the creole cultures throughout the country, especially in Louisianan.
At Walmart today, there must have been a "best costume contest" in the store because there were about 5-8 adults shopping that were wearing costumes and just having a lot of fun. AND last night ( 30th) I went to play tennis with costumes and prizes.. we had a ton of fun. So, while it's usually all about kids and candy, adults do have fun with it, too.
I'm from the US, but yeah several commenters saying how can he know about an American holiday if he's not from here is just 🙄 I'm guessing when they heard him say the first written mention of the term trick or treat being from a newspaper in Alberta, their "USA number 1" brains wouldn't process it to be anywhere outside the country.
So funny! The pumpkin picture you have for your cover picture it's the same one i used to carve my pumpkin this year. I made the one with the big smile in the top right. It came out great and is lit up with a candle on my front porch right now. Happy Halloween! 🎃
Growing up in the sixties teen in the seventies we went door to door trick or treating. The older kids kinda kept an eye on the younger ones, then went to a block party. Sadly I only got to go to one before they stopped in our area (the campaign against home made it might be poisoned was in full swing). But there were home made cookies and popcorn balls. We bobbed for apples and danced. Had a costume contest, it was much fun. Now people take their kids to the mall. Some neighborhoods still have trick or treating but they are the ones near schools with many children in them.
Here's a great example of how the customs mutate in different regions: trick or treating somehow migrated to Christmas in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My mother told us often of how they, as children, collected Christmas treats door to door by calling out "Merry Christmas!" She's 92, now! And I know it must be true because around 1965 or so, we visited family there and did the same thing! I think we got Christmas candy. I assume it's not done anymore, but our family is all in California, now.
Day of the dead is its own thing. It is completely separate from Halloween. It's basically like Thanksgiving but you specifically make the favorite foods of relatives who are no longer alive and visit them at the cemetery later on. I think it's best thought of as national family history day. That's basically what is happening.
Our Halloween parties always had a block of ice the size of a bath tub with two channels cut into the surface long ways. You would have it set on a angle and pour shots of alcohol from the top to people waiting down below. It was always a fun time.
He's pretty good. Good historical information is important. Good to hear about your traditions and the Portugal beliefs. Pumpkins are fun to carve and when I was a kid, I usually did one. We had about 40+ kids (along with parents) come by trick or treating tonight. My favorite ones were the little girl whose mom kept prompting her to say "trick or treat" and the little boy who yelled out "chocolate, I love this chocolate". Very polite too, almost all saying thank you. So fun to see all of the costumes. We take the large glass out of the storm door and there are always a few who are surprised when we put our arm "through the door window" to give them the candy. Love it.
This guy is adorable going out of his way to say "about" so many times because he knows Americans love the way Canadians say that word. Lol. Very cool video! I've heard all this stuff before over the years, but not ever compiled into one video before (that I can recall, anyway). He was very thorough. :)
We do Halloween because it's fun, mostly for kids and teenagers, but it's also a chance for adults to cut loose too. Halloween is any excuse for a party.
Speaking of "cutting loose" and "gay" stuff, for half a century Halloween in San Francisco has featured a sexual fetish party, clothing optional. The venue has changed but this year it's at what is probably the city's largest remaining "sex club" (there used to be many, gay and straight, but HIV/AIDS kind of ended that).
I was and the US Coast guard session and the Caribbean islands and we dealt with witchcraft to do down there that is so horrific and how when they celebrate they do sacrifices yes children and grown ups are sacrifice on the Halloween I work at all fortunate in America and South Carolina and I'll tell you right now there's so many murders and sacrifices on Halloween it comes from the roots of druids and they would wear costumes to try to hide from demons that they thought were walking the earth and they would trick or treat it came from asking them either to hand over one of their slaves for sacrifice or they would give them a treat if they did hand them over this guy is a total liar it's evil if you're a Christian a true Christian you know about this stuff and you know that is nothing nothing about this holiday is good not one single thing it's about death celebrating death and I would never let my children even though I used to trick or treat I would never let my children somewhere hell if your Christian and love God you know how much God hates this holiday you wouldn't even believe it children are God's treasure and more kids are sacrificed on Halloween any other time I'm telling you this as an military better and walking law enforcement so you better wake up
Its my impression that europeans in general and the english in particular are much more likely to throw "fancy dress" or costume parties. In the US, Halloween is pretty much it. I like costume parties and if I were to have a costume party in May, people would think its weird.
@MichaelJohnson-vi6eh America has themed parties where you dress up as characters of a movie or TV show. An occasional historical themed party where you dress up as your favorite historical figure. I remember the annual toga day at high school where all the kids would wear homemade togas to school. Not to mention "Rocky Horror Picture Show", This is a music.
Comedy that played in Movie theaters for almost 30 years. I was never at one of these, but I heard they were quite raucous and costume laden. It's probably more common in Britain to have a random costume party but it's not unusual enough to be considered weird in America.
@@Majorpain32677 Does God also hate punctuation?
Until relatively recently "gay" meant "happy" and not homosexual.
Yes, it meant happy or bright colored.❤️✌️🌼
if you sing that one Christmas song, one of the lyrics says "merry and gay."
@@RoseNZieg "Don we now our gay apparel(sp?)
It still means that, closed-minded people can’t grasp the concept of words having more than one meaning, especially if it defines something they hate.
@@necrogenesis1981 worded it better than i could tbh, i was about to say something about this
You’ve gotta come to the states in the Fall sometime and go to a farm and pick out a pumpkin to carve, and drink apple cider, and check out people’s Halloween decorations. Some people decorate their houses as big for Halloween as for Christmas. Picking out a pumpkin and carving it into a Jack O’Lantern makes me feel so nostalgic for when I was a kid. Once we’d removed the pulp, we’d roast the seeds for a little pumpkin carving snack.
The video is absolutely right about why the pumpkins became a symbol of Halloween. They are one of the harvest items we have available for harvest and their color is perfect.
And they make much better lanterns than turnips do.
I love seeing a large pumpkin patch in the fall, it is beautiful!
turnips....
… and it is really hard to eat the rind once you have scooped out the insides for cooking.
So, you may as well decorate with it.
Mexico celebrates “ Day of the Dead”
Pretty cool Holiday
You should look into it
Mexico has a great culture!
Love the day of the dead festival and clothing and all the things, it’s so beautiful
This video isn’t about Mexico.
The Day of the Dead is an extension of Halloween. Halloween being All Hallows or All Saints Eve and the next day being All Saints Day OR what it is called in Mexico, The Day of the Dead.
@@IamHumanWoman sometimes it helps to give suggestions in general
@@IamHumanWomanBut it was included, wasn't it?
Canadians absolutely celebrate Halloween and have done so since the late 1800's. Also, this man's accent is fairly heavily Canadian. It's been said that those from the UK and Europe have difficulty distinguishing it from the American accent. I wonder if the host of European Reacts can(?)
Aboot for about is one example.
18 thousands?
W9w! The 18000's! Your way ahead of the rest of us.😅
If you watch the movie 'Meet me in St. Louis', you'll see a Halloween segment that shows how Halloween was celebrated in 1900's. Very different from these days.
I was just about to mention this, from that you can see how the tricks and pranks aspect manifested.
This guy has the most Canadian accent.
Aboot
@@dianajemison105 dead giveaway.
A boot lol
No, as a Canadian, I find him annoying bcs he says aboot knowing that it is not pronounced like that by Cdns - -he's trolling you. We say ABOUT which rhymes with out (not aboot and oot). Never have I ever in my 70 years heard a Canadian say aboot. We are not scottish.
Shedule
At that time, "gay" meant happy or festive.
It is well-known AND documented why trick-or-treating began. Early 20th Century Halloween in the US was a night of teenagers playing pranks on their neighbors. Knocking over outhouses, soaping windows, stealing gates were all pranks played. President Franklin Deleno Roosevelt was the one who moved the holiday towards handing candy out to stop some of the damage done on Halloween. The candy was given out to as an alternative to pranks, thus trick OR treat.
Catholics in America celebrate All Saint's Day on November 1. And All Soul's Day on November 2.
Latin Catholics, yes. We Eastern Catholics celebrate All Saints Sunday on the First Sunday after Pentecost, and we have five All Souls Saturdays in the Spring.
Same with Lutherans. How this canuck didn't express "all saints' day" even in the context of "all hallows' eve" which is just an antiquated way of saying the exact same thing, is beyond me. Must be all the maple syrup.
So do Episcopalians.
@@JeffreyDick-x6g November 1, February 2, May 1, and August 1 are cross-quarter days that mark the midpoint of the season. It's natural that they have holidays. August 1, Lammas, isn't really a thing in the US but I guess it has some significance in Ireland and the UK.
@@GeraldWalls Never heard of Lammas. What holiday falls on May 1?
Jack-o-lanterns are simply what we call the carved pumpkin. Halloween is the number one kid holiday. It’s just fun. Happy Halloween from Indiana my friend.
The christian angle is also why Mexico has a lot of influence over Halloween in the USA. A native celebration of dead ancestors was blended with the catholic All Saints Day into "Dia de los Muertos" and that is an increasingly big part of the decorations and festivities for Halloween in many parts of the USA.
For me, I don’t mind your pauses. I love learning about other cultures. As well, since I’m not able to travel to other countries, it makes me feel like I’ve made a trip to Portugal. We in America do love the the kids going door to door and seeing their costumes and give out candy. We get disappointed when not many children come by.
So true! We didn't get many trick-or-treaters this year, and I could tell it made my mom sad (yesterday's rain kept them away, I think).
I love when he pauses to tell us about differences between Portugal and the US or other countries. :)
@@Michele-z4k there are other countries I'd love to go to, and financially my boyfriend and I could probably afford a few trips in our remaining lifetime (we're in our 50's.)
But planning travel is sometimes exhausting to me. Flying is tiring, even if only a few hours flight, there's all the time waiting at the airport, and because I get motion sick.
I'd love to go to the cherry blossom season in Japan, but I'm kind of doubtful I could handle a flight that long.
@@xzonia1 we had sleet and snow in Minnesota on Halloween. On the Tuesday before Halloween, it was 80° F! Even at 3am on Wednesday morning, it was still 75.
@ I hear you. My daughter went to Japan. She absolutely loved it and didn’t want to leave. When we met her when she arrived home she was sobbing. We were worried something bad had happened. She said no. She was crying because she didn’t want to come home.
From the East Coast it’s a 20 hour flight. She got a Korean Air flight out of Los Angeles. She said they were so nice, the amenities were fabulous and she felt as comfortable as being in a recliner in her living room.
At the end of October, we in the northern hemisphere feel the nearness of death and subsequently the spirit world because things in nature are reaching the end of their life cycle all around us.
As another commenter has already mentioned, Mexico celebrates "The Day of the Dead" which goes back to pre-Christian Mesoamerican culture around this time of year. The Latin American community still makes altars to honor their ancestors and beloved dead, many of them in front yards so the public can come pay their respects, in Chicago where I live. They also make skull-shaped sweets that are traditional for Day of the Dead, which may have had some influence on Halloween candy.
I've been told that in Scotland and Ireland they would carve scary faces into turnips on Samhain, following the same logic as many ancient cultures that scary things would actually scare evil spirits away. They believed that since the spirits were about, they had to take protective measures against evil and unwanted spirits in addition to honoring and welcoming the spirits of the dead. When this custom came to America, pumpkins were used to carve scary faces into because they were much bigger and easier to carve. That's what I've heard, anyway.
So that's an interesting example of how American Halloween is really a combination of Scottish/Irish Samhain + the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Ancient primitive superstitious folks “felt” the spirit world (something the senses could never detect) before we knew what electricity, bacteria, fungus, the Golgi apparatus, or gasoline was. Not sure any intelligent, morally solid adult in the 21st Century would make such silly claims, though.
As a Pagan, I can tell you that the differences between the Holiday Halloween and the religious celebration of Samhain differ. Halloween is a party, dressing up, taking kids to get candy, then the adults get to have their pary. Haunted houses spring up all over the place, haunted hayrides. Carved pumpkins on every house in some places, giant plastic skeletons, tombstones in the front yard, even a few ghosts.
Samhain is the final harvest, the time when all the food should be in, canned, or in the cellar for winter. It's also the time when the Veil Between the Worlds is thinnest and old friends and family can come to visit if they would like. Some groups put out a "dump place" at thee table for those who want to share a meal with us. We will usually set our circle 9clean the ritual spot and sprinkle salt water, smudge with incense, and ask the elemental spirits in to guard it. We invite the God and Goddess in to the celebration. We sit at dinner and remember our ancestors, it's a time to tell the stories of those we've lost, especially in that year. After dinner, practical gifts can be rechanged things like a new bowl, a box of incents, cards, or a necklace and nothing largely extravagant, it's with love you are passing.
Friends of ours gathered and we had our handfasting Samhain night 1993. This is the Pagan/wiccan wedding ceremony. We pledged our love, exchanged rings, and had our hands bound by a rope we braided together. As long as that knot lasts, the story is that the marriage will last. Seems to have worked in our case, 31 years. What we didn't know is that our priestess could have signed the legal papers for the wedding as clergy so we had to go do it again in front of a Justice of the Piece on November 11 to get it final in the courts. But we celebrate the official one as October 31. The circle is closed, the elements and dieties present are invited to stay or go as they will, then it's over.
Howdays we go out to dinner on Halloween night for our anniversary. It's a nice change of pace for us
I still consider myself Christian, but I also see the necessity for the balance of a priestess. I've had some talk s with my priest and he's okay with it. We've not taken anything away, we've merely added to it.
Also, I'm interested in American history and my understanding of the "trick or treat" aspect is that it was common knowledge in the early 20th century that on this night, teenagers would roam about and ask for treats from door to door. It was known that if you did not give a treat, you could be pranked that night by a trick. Things became quite wild and in an effort to calm this down, society began purposely directing this holiday into a more controlled experience for younger children. A great classic movie to watch that highlights an early trick or treat experience is the move "Meet Me in St. Louis" with Judy Garland. A very entertaining family friendly movie to watch. I highly recommend it. Especially since you enjoy all things American.
Back in the 1930s my mother lived in a small town with few street lights. They would carry handled paper mache pumpkins with little candles so they could as they went around the neighborhood trick or treating. Also, perhaps candy started being given out to persuade the kids not to prank their house. There is a line in an old kids song with lyrics of “trick or treat for Halloween. Better treat us right, or overnight, your little White House turns green.” Halloween in the 1960s was magical. We had so much fun and it was rare to find a house not decorated and giving out candy.
October 31st to November 2nd are religious days still celebrated here in the states....its said that during these days is when the veil between this world & the spirit world is the thinnest so its easier to communicate with spirits....check out the history & celebration of Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico which has a deep connection to that part of Halloween
Is that the heaviest Canadian accent anyone has heard?? Totally OTT.
What are you talking aboot?
LOL I thought it was just my Southern ears hearing the heavy Canadian accent.
Almost seems exaggerated. Do Canadians pronounce scheduled the same way they do in the UK, that surprised me. Honestly, this guy seems to be kind of full of himself.
other than 'aboot' I don't really notice
@nikolthomas2544 He said “oot” aboot as much.
Something I think you’d like reacting to is a Cornfield pumpkin patch. It is a fall attraction that focuses on the Harvest aspect of October (and September and November, but I’ll explain why I emphasize October) that has various little seasonal activities, but two main activities are a big corn maze (literally a maze of corn), and a more family focused activity of picking out fresh pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. It’s the perfect activity that leads into Halloween because you would go there to have some fun (kinda like a seasonal carnival in a sense) and then before you leave you would go and grab a few pumpkins with your family. Then when you carve them for Halloween they would usually last just long enough to begin rotting during early November, so you would them clear your Halloween decorations and put up your Thanksgiving stuff up.
I grew up in St. Louis Missouri (the intersection of the midwest and the south). It was a local tradition to tell jokes when you went trick or treating. Who ever had the best joke got extra candy.
It was a huge shock when i moved away (chicago) and found out the jokes werent a huge part of trick or treating
I'm from Texas, and this is a brand new concept to me!
I love the way this guy says the word about. Happy Halloween!
He's Canadian
Aboot 😊
I'm 57, born and raised in Canada. I dont say aboot nor have I ever heard anyone say it. I say about..."out" just like it's spelled. That being said, I've never lived in Eastern Canada so maybe it's an East thing. I can't speak on that.
@somewhatsassy67 I wasn't being disrespectful, I literally love the way he says that word. I like different.. ✌️
@RandyAbbott-i5j OH no disrespect taken. Sorry if I sounded snippy haha. That wasn't my intention. It's all good. 🙂
Gay used to mean colorful or festive long before it became used as a word for ... What we use it for today.
It also meant light of heart, happy. I immediately think of a mother in a 1940s(?) film telling her daughter she wants to find a man who is gay for a good, lasting relationship.. Also, the book title Our Hearts Were Young And Gay. A fun book, incidently. I miss using the word as we did decades ago. Diane, using Joe's tablet.
Why the hesitation to state that it means ones sexual orientation? I'm a lesbian and find this offensive.
@@carriemaxwell417Probably because if she would have used the word some group of people would have been offended by the word. Or, perhaps she thought UA-cam would censor or give her a strike. I’ve had it happen myself. Sometimes you just can’t win. Use a word, don’t use a word. Someone is always offended by something.
If I was easily offended, I would have been offended when Biden called me “garbage”. Or, being referred to as a Karen simply by being born a white woman. Or, considered “privileged” or “r*cist” because I’m Caucasian. Yeah, ok. I could list another ten examples. It’s just not a hill I’m going to climb.
Not using this word doesn’t seem like a hill worth climbing either. It certainly wasn’t derogatory, hateful, mean spirited, condescending, dismissive, bullying, etc. All of which would have been offensive. Some things are worth fighting for, words aren’t one of them in my humble opinion.
Just my thoughts, opinion and perspective which of course, mean nothing to anyone. I acknowledge that and I’m okay with it. I’m no better or less than anyone else. ✌️
Want me to blow your mind… tomatoes are native to the Americas. Can you imagine Italy before tomatoes?
Tomatoes, chilies, pumpkins, potatoes... All native to the Americas!
We do Halloween because it's fun. Bottom line.
I do Halloween because of chocolate. Bottom line.
I personally love the day of the dead traditions as well as Halloween. If you haven’t seen the movie Coco you should. It a beautiful movie and it’s day of the dead theme is great.
Great movie!
Happy Halloween, Andre! I can't wait to watch your video of your first trip to the US!
JJ is really interesting. He's very thoughtful, and his opinions are well thought out. He's well worth the subscription! His videos are very informative.
Scrying has been around since Ancient Egypt, and so has almost all other forms of Divination. This guy is Canadian.
Do a search for world's largest pumpkins. People compete for the largest every year.
this guys Canadian accent is so funny lol Happy Halloween!
What do you think is so funny aboot it? 😅
@@paulahobbs4411 when he says ABOOT
@@paulahobbs4411 LOL the way he says about "aboot" and the way he pronounced the word "schedule" lol
@ oh no I didn’t mean Andre I meant the guy talking about Halloween he was reacting to
That’s common for Canadians.
One of our towns traditions is to have a race. People either grow or buy a GIANT pumpkin (a couple hundred pounds). They hollow it out and then the adults paddle/race each other across the towns central "pond". The winner makes it to the other side, the losers sink. It's fun for all!!!
Pranks were the original antics of costumed kids-- literally, Trick or a Treat-- came about as a kind of bargain with the little devils! Pass out treats and they'll leave your footbridge alone and go pick on your neighbor!
This was in my mother's era (1930's/40's).
By my time (Boomer here), we roamed freely as far as our feet could take us and hauled home massive pillowcases of candies-- that pretty much lasted until Santa came! 😁
I work overnight as a sergeant and was off for Halloween. I got approal from my way higher up (Warden is a hint) to dress up and pass out treats for my oncoming shift and 2nd shift leaving. These are grown adults who were like kids again. My immediate supervisor didn't even know this was happening. Just seeing my coworkers smiling, joking around, and having a good time ment the world to me.
Old days Irish carved turnips into Jack-o-lanterns.
IRISH!
Europeans in general, carved faces into things they had available, particularly produce, and it worked especially well with produce that is different inside than on the surface (so e.g., potatoes, apples), because all you have to do is carve away the peel in a pattern. They brought this with them when they came over to America.
The reasons why Americans eventually settled on pumpkins specifically are not entirely clear, but there are several likely factors. First of all, pumpkins are common here, very easy to grow if you have plenty of space, and have been widely cultivated for a long time, probably because, in general, America has always had more land per capita than Europe. Second, pumpkins are relatively large, so you can do a fairly detailed carving, and it can be seen from some distance. Pumpkins can also be quite eye-catching just in general, and they ripen relatively late in the season, so they tend to be abundant right around the time that the fall holidays are celebrated. (This is also why e.g. pumpkin pie is associated with American Thanksgiving.) Also, the range of colors that leaves turn in the fall became closely associated with autumn decorations, and orange pumpkins fall right into line with that. They're also soft and easy to carve, so you can let children do it when they're too young to handle a really sharp knife. And some cultivars of pumpkin, including the ones most commonly used for carving, are relatively easy to hollow out entirely, which lets you do things like put a candle inside, and it shines out through the holes; that's a lot harder to do with a potato or turnip.
Halloween has always been a huge thing in my life and still I'm now 65 years old and continue to use costumes to celebrate Halloween this year i was photographed over a hundred times where i work and even more while taking my grandson out trick & treating lord willing I'll be doing it next year.
My mom told me that “trick or treat” came from asking for a treat so you didn’t do a trick to that house. She was born in 1926 so she grew up when trick or treating was starting. Makes sense to me.
My friend who lives in a fancier neighborhood, keeps count. She told me they had 2,000 trick-or-treaters. There are only 37,000 people in the town.
November 1 is still a holy day. 😂
I don’t know a particular video to suggest, but you may enjoy learning about the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration- which dates to pre-Colombian traditions of the Aztec empire.
Halloween was brought over from immigrants coming to the United States. The Irish and Scottish used to celebrate the end of the harvest. (Samhain Oct 31- Nov 1) They had big, huge bonfires and took a piece of coal from the bonfire to relight their fireplaces in their homes. The coal was put in Turnips that they carved. When they came to the US pumpkins were used instead. There is quite a lot more involved, but I have known what Halloween is about since I was a child now 60. So, the person you're watching may not have it quite correct for all of us from the United States of America. Just wanted to say my opinion.
Yes, the Scotch -Irish and Irish probably brought it here as a celebration before the more somber All Saints Day and All Souls Day on November 1rst and 2nd. It also has ties to harvest festivals, but since the US has changed from an agricultural to manufacturing nation, only pumpkins as Jack-o-lanterns have really lasted. This ties into folk tales about Headless Horsemen like Washington Irvings tale of Sleepy Hallow. Other scary stories from the romantic era like Frankenstein and Dracula later became part of our scary monsters we like to dress as at Halloween. The Aztec practice of celebrating your ancestors on Dia los Muertos was changed by the Catholic Church to be celebrated as fall becomes winter on All Souls Day. This in the Southwestern part of the country has extended Halloween to that day lately as the Hispanic population has grown. (San Antonio Texas has the largest celebration for Dia los Muertos in the US) Trick or Treat came about really as an acceptable bribe to not do anything to my house. Parties have started to come back even for children as fears of pins in candy or poison even have grown. In an infamous murder case in the 70s, a father killed his children using poison Halloween candy. But adults are getting into celebrating in as well as children with elaborate costumes and nostalgia of their childhood days of candy and Charlie Brown on TV.
The monster stuff isn’t just post war stuff like vampires and count Dracula a.k.a. Vlad III, commonly was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death in 1476/77. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. He got the nickname from his love for impaling his enemies on stakes. Sounds familiar oh vampire and stakes. And even in the early days people thought you were vampires victim they would lock cage around your burial site so that you didn’t come back. And there’s been a lot more. Like the bells on graves in case you are get buried alive. So it’s not just a post war thing
I like this guy. You should do more videos by him!
Have you ever thought about reacting to a native American Pow Wow, Such as "Experience America’s Largest Powwow | Short Film Showcase. I think you would really enjoy this and you will learn a bit about the people that was on the land before any european ever landed on this land.
Oh I agree, Powwows are amazing!
"Aboot"!!!! 😆 🤣 😂
Love it😁
This is the most extreme aboot that I've ever heard lol
No such thing....I'm Canadian so I know.
@@valwhelan3533No,you say "abutt"
Yeah, Canadian. My roommate in college was from Winnipeg, so yeah that clued ne in.
When I was a kid, in the Detroit area, we used to trick or treat by saying:
Help the poor
My pants are tore
Give me some money
To buy some more...
My father remembered doing this back in the late 1920s and early 1930s
As an American, I clicked this video because I don't know why we like Halloween.
Also, this guy is EXTREMELY CANADIAN based on his accent.
So he probably isn't the best source.
It's curious that Samhain did not get brought to Canada by immigrants but by American cultural influence.
He is Portuguese 😉🤘🏻
@@SteelCurtain024 Not Andre. The video he's reacting to.
I actually really really love educational videos like this, there are a lot of things that us Americans do not know actually and to connect it with your country’s holidays and traditions especially with what is celebrated currently is definitely interesting and good to know!!!! I like putting these things together to make better sense of the origins 😊
Howling is nothing more than a satanic holiday with women and children are sacrificed to Satan a military veteran and US Coast guard and I dealt with these kind of people down in the Caribbean islands when voodoo and also in America with Satanism Satan at church there's nothing good about Halloween whatsoever
Halloween is my favorite night of there. There is so much joy and it's so wholesome to see the children get excited to dress as their favorite characters and receiving treats from their neighbors. It is just so wonderful and the night is filled with happiness for my family.
That's the most Canadian-y accent outside of Letterkenny I have ever heard!
My daughter had a great time. We skipped school to visit Hubers Orchard to pick apples and get more pumpkins for her, and my husband got him some boy their whisky, I got blueberry wine, and we all got pumpkin donuts. We came home, and she and her dad made their Jack-O-lanter while I made some apple pies. Later, after dinner, she got ready and transformed herself into Wednesday Adams, and we took her trick or treating. My husband is Mexican, so we are also celebrating Day of the Dead, so we have up the ofrienda for his dad, and later, we will head to downtown Louisville 4th Street live for festivities.
I am American, 57 years old.
I still dress up
I love Halloween
Halloween 🎃 is a very fun celebration! It starts off the holiday season, which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Eve/Day.
I’m sure if you watch his other video he explains but yeah pizza is traditionally made with a tomato sauce and tomatoes are native to the Americas. So pizza was an invention of Italian-American immigrants
Tomato's are from South America, not the USA. Spaniards brought them to Europe from Mexico. Italy got some around 1544 and thought they were a form of eggplant. The Spanish colonists introduced them to Asia. By 1820 they were grown in England and Germany but not eaten there, since they thought they were poisonous, in spite of knowing Italians and Chinese used them in their cooking. South Carolina probably grew the 1st tomato's in the States in the mid-18th century and Thomas Jefferson ate them while in Paris and brought seeds back with him.
@@beckysimeone4882 I never said tomatoes are from the USA, I said the Americas. South America is part of the Americas
November 1 is All Saint's Day aka The Festival of All the Saints in the Roman Catholic holy days calendar. The vast majority of the holy days in the Catholic calendar coincide with the Pagan holy days. They may be a few days before or after the Pagan holy days, but they are very close. Samhain is the time during the dying of the year when the veil between the worlds thins and other worldly beings can slip into this world and contact us or we can contact them. Many of the customs of Hallowe'en are rooted in those earlier Pagan customs.
Halloween was a big deal for my family as a kid. Carving pumpkins on the kitchen floor. My mom would spread out newspaper and we just went for it. 7 kids in my family sooo. Lots of pumpkins on the front porch. We'd go "Trick or treating" and mom would have hot cider with cinnamon sticks waiting when we got home. (Drink cider and sort out candy) So much fun! Happy Halloween 🎃👻
@@NancyCusimano-o8u in my mind I can smell pumpkin guts while reading your comment. In real life I have a cold and can barely smell anything lol.
What's ironic about this video is the obviously Canadian guy is trying to talk about Halloween in America
Glad others noticed too. The a-boot is a dead giveaway.
He so Canadian I thought he was going to apologize for something.
True, but then they do celebrate Halloween in Canada too.
Succeeding in doing so, I would say.
Is it just me or does he also sound like a cross between Carl Sagan and Jeff Goldblum?
Happy Halloween Andre 🍬🍬🍬🎃👻
I've seen a couple of videos of this Canadian dude's fixation on American culture. Bless his heart.
Halloween is very complicated. It's a mixture of traditions from a lot of places around the world. I always just found it fun, dressing up as anything you wanted to. The last time I went out in costume was as a black cat. A lot of people don't celebrate the trick or treat part anymore because of child safety. Quite a few years back the malls or small town shops were frequented by trick or treaters because parents considered it safer. People also throw parties where everyone comes in costume. I think it all depends on what part of the country you live in and also whether you live in suburbia and an urban area.
Just for fun, you might want to look for videos about the largest pumpkins grown in the US.
Some are big enough to turn into a canoe and paddle around them (briefly)
Oh yeah we still bob for apples. lol put apples in a huge huge bucket or pot and try to get apples out with your mouth. It’s a party festival type of thing. And caramel covered apples are popular as a sweet 😊
Dia de los Muertos images have infiltrated pretty heavily into Halloween, at least in Southwestern states, and probably beyond. Target and other stores include Day of the Dead costumes, house decorations, bakery items, and more. It's becoming common to wear sugar pumpkin design face paint for Halloween or include calaveras in yard displays.
america use to really love holloween, it was a big deal till about 2015 or so, it is still done but not nearly as much as it use to be. when i was a kid. the americans carried the tradition to Holland. i remember the first year it was celebrated, the dutch had no idea what we where doing and asked.. it caught on big time with the dutch and many of them adopted it as one of their own.. the dutch are really cool people. =)
We still do. Where do you live? Every place I have lived and or visited it is still big. Maybe you are talking about kids walking around to Tor T.. Adults have taken it over to house parties, bars and festivals BIG time.
Happy Halloween Andre (though it's probably Nov. 1 now where you are). Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday! I grew up in a theatrical family in Salem, Mass (your favorite state to say, so you can say "Mass" to make it easier)... we used to do Halloween up huge in the 1970s when I was a kid. I still love it, but my nieces are all grown now, except for my grand-niece but she lives in Europe and doesn't celebrate. When she is a teenager, I'll fly her to the US for a Halloween celebration. That's what I did with her mother when she was 15 and she fell in love with the holiday. I'm older now, so for me, I'm just watching my favorite Halloween movies and eating candy corn haha!
Love how much I learned from this video! I’ve heard before that the scary faces we carve into pumpkins (or turnips back then) were meant to scare away evil spirits
I live in Oklahoma and I enjoy your videos, you say you love America so in order to really learn of this place I think learning about the first people would be a place you should visit. Here in Oklahoma their is a large population of first people and the pow wows are open to all people so I hope you will watch a video or two about these people. They are like no other in the world and I know you will enjoy learning of a people and culture that is new and fantastic
As November 1st is All Saints Day and most Holy, ancient people believed evil beings were more active on October 31st. They would carve root vegetables and light them to scare the evil spirits away.
It was a spectacular night for trick-or-treat in New York tonight! Great fun to see the kids' costumes without winter coats and hats. 🎃👻🌙
@@ksborder you have some of the weather we had in Minnesota on Tuesday. High in the low 80's. It was still 75 at 3 in the morning!!! Then the temp started dropping, and by Halloween we had the 30's & 40's, with sleet and snow.
There was a Halloween in the early 2000's, that when I took my little niece early trick or treating, it was in the 60's and I went in just a tshirt and pants!
Some of my best memories of Halloween were carving our pumpkin. We'd put it out on our front porch with a candle in it. My kids loved it too 🎃
You know, he's right about pizza. When I was in Italy, everyone was perplexed about what I thought pizza was. They had something they called pizza, but it had crust on both bottom and top.
You need to go much further back than the movies for Frankenstein, Dracula and the mummy. Those movies were made from the books.
Halloween is the best... All coutries do it a bit different... But a night if fun amd remembering the dead and remembering that we are all mortal. . Its cathartic and fun... I DO think Americans do it best even if its a lil commercial. BUT we get into it more than anybody except maybe Mexico / South America
And Spain / Portugal too... But it's a lil more traditional
Please do a video about YOUR. Culture... As an American id LOVE to hear about your home and traditions ... Americans would 1000000%watch that
Just came across your channel; love your perspective (& the accent). I laughed out loud multiple times! Hello from Gun Barrel, Texas, USA!
It’s funny how you mentioned Portugal has its own version of “Halloween” cause our neighbors in Mexico has their own celebrations called “The Day of the Dead” aka Dia de los Muertos, on November 1 & 2 but it’s basically honoring the dead.
The Chinese celebrated hungry ghost month so celebrating the dead is a very old tradition for all humans, no matter where you are in the world. Native Americans culture is very old and only past down by the elders so I wouldn’t know if they celebrated Halloween but I do know they are very honorable to their ancestors and can respect that.
I have close to 400 Trick or Treaters every Halloween! It’s so much fun to see all the different costumes, both the little kids and adults! They are always so friendly and polite.
My father was older, born in the 1910s. Treats were given to prevent tricks (or “damage”) like tping, cars and houses being egged, windows being soaped, jack-o-lanterns smashed, etc. He would periodically respond to trick or treat with “trick”. The kids were stumped because they didn’t have a trick planned and didn’t know about that part.
The giving of "treats" also has religious significance. The treats equal to offering food and gifts to dead friends and relatives to keep their souls at rest. Other offerings were made to bad spirits to keep them away.
I love JJ and his stereotypical Canadian pronunciations. Nice video, my friend! You're one of my go-to's for light-hearted youtube entertainment
ps, I believe Canada does indeed celebrate Halloween. As much as they'll dislike the notion, in almost every important way Canadians are culturally American.
I'm 57, Canadian, and we've always celebrated Halloween.
Halloween is Christmas without all the stress. You can decorate or not, and the only present(s) you have to buy is candy or inexpensive trinkets to hand out to people dressed in “costumes” who come begging at your door.
you need to look up about the gaint pumkins grown
Halloween ultimately goes back to European harvest festivals in pre-Roman times, yes. But, by the time it was brought over to America, it's association with harvest had been almost entirely lost. By then we were calling it, "Halloween", which, yes, is a reference to the next day being All Saints Day, a medieval Roman Catholic holiday. The eve of a holiday (or of any day) is the evening _before_ because of the influence of various ancient cultures that started the day at sundown, e.g., ancient Israel. (To this day, among practicing religious Jews, the weekly Sabbath starts on Friday evening and runs to Saturday evening.) Numerous ancient cultures started each new day either at sunrise or sunset, or sometimes at dawn or at dusk. Most modern cultures start the day at midnight, principally due to the influence of Rome, which has had a very large impact on calendar practices worldwide. Rome is also responsible for numbers of days in each month that almost everyone uses now, and for the leap-year formula, among other things. However, the seven-day week and the 24-hour day are much older.
I *think* Canadians celebrate Halloween quite similarly to Americans? Perhaps not quite as much? I know their Thanksgiving is on an earlier date, in October, so Halloween may fall more into that shadow of that for them and thus get less attention than it does in America? (For Americans, it's the biggest holiday between Labor Day in early September and Thanksgiving in late November.) But apart from that, I think their Halloween traditions are mostly very similar to ours.
The Roman Catholic church is the #1 international poster child for syncretism, i.e., for taking whatever local culture or religion exists in any given area, putting your own spin on it, and turning it into part of your religion, so that it becomes something the locals can comfortably adopt. This is precisely how All Saints' Eve became a thing in the first place. It's also where we get the modern date for Christmas, and the English-language name of Easter, among other things. (The Portuguese name for Easter comes, very indirectly, from the Hebrew for Passover; the date for Easter is canonically the Sunday after Passover, although there are several distinct traditions for exactly how to calculate where that lands on the modern Gregorian calendar in any given year. In antiquity, generally there was someone in charge of deciding when to insert intercalary months; the idea of establishing a fixed formula for this, is credited to Julius Caesar's desire to be away from the capital at that time of year for reasons involving his military career; but Caesar's formula is too Roman to work for the Hebrew calendar, so when people who used the Roman calendar started wanting to know the dates of Jewish holidays, they had to work out how to reconcile that, and different people came up with different rules for it.)
Great job, love this!
Halloween is a religious holiday called all Hallows eve. Where you dress up so the ghosts or demons don't find you because the next day is All Saints Day if you're catholic
It’s also a Samhain tradition, costumes were worn to confuse and scare off the spirits who visit when the veil is thin so they don’t get trapped here
@necrogenesis1981 yes a lot of Halloween comes from those traditions. While they carved turnips, which is difficult to say the least, I'm glad someone chose pumpkin
The early popularity of skeletons likely had to do with the beginnings of modern medical science in the Victorian era when there were body snatchers who were stealing corpses and selling them to various institutions for study after which a portion of them ended up as skeleton displays in class rooms. He is also ignoring the impacts of the creole cultures throughout the country, especially in Louisianan.
Gay just means happy
That's actually the original definition of it
At Walmart today, there must have been a "best costume contest" in the store because there were about 5-8 adults shopping that were wearing costumes and just having a lot of fun. AND last night ( 30th) I went to play tennis with costumes and prizes.. we had a ton of fun. So, while it's usually all about kids and candy, adults do have fun with it, too.
We do celebrate Hallowe'en in Canada pretty much the same way as in the US
I'm from the US, but yeah several commenters saying how can he know about an American holiday if he's not from here is just 🙄
I'm guessing when they heard him say the first written mention of the term trick or treat being from a newspaper in Alberta, their "USA number 1" brains wouldn't process it to be anywhere outside the country.
So funny! The pumpkin picture you have for your cover picture it's the same one i used to carve my pumpkin this year. I made the one with the big smile in the top right. It came out great and is lit up with a candle on my front porch right now. Happy Halloween! 🎃
Growing up in the sixties teen in the seventies we went door to door trick or treating. The older kids kinda kept an eye on the younger ones, then went to a block party. Sadly I only got to go to one before they stopped in our area (the campaign against home made it might be poisoned was in full swing). But there were home made cookies and popcorn balls. We bobbed for apples and danced. Had a costume contest, it was much fun. Now people take their kids to the mall. Some neighborhoods still have trick or treating but they are the ones near schools with many children in them.
Here's a great example of how the customs mutate in different regions: trick or treating somehow migrated to Christmas in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My mother told us often of how they, as children, collected Christmas treats door to door by calling out "Merry Christmas!" She's 92, now! And I know it must be true because around 1965 or so, we visited family there and did the same thing! I think we got Christmas candy. I assume it's not done anymore, but our family is all in California, now.
Day of the dead is its own thing. It is completely separate from Halloween. It's basically like Thanksgiving but you specifically make the favorite foods of relatives who are no longer alive and visit them at the cemetery later on. I think it's best thought of as national family history day. That's basically what is happening.
He is a bit wrong on Frankenstein's monster. The book came out in 1818.
Our Halloween parties always had a block of ice the size of a bath tub with two channels cut into the surface long ways. You would have it set on a angle and pour shots of alcohol from the top to people waiting down below. It was always a fun time.
He's pretty good. Good historical information is important.
Good to hear about your traditions and the Portugal beliefs.
Pumpkins are fun to carve and when I was a kid, I usually did one.
We had about 40+ kids (along with parents) come by trick or treating tonight. My favorite ones were the little girl whose mom kept prompting her to say "trick or treat" and the little boy who yelled out "chocolate, I love this chocolate". Very polite too, almost all saying thank you. So fun to see all of the costumes. We take the large glass out of the storm door and there are always a few who are surprised when we put our arm "through the door window" to give them the candy. Love it.
This guy is adorable going out of his way to say "about" so many times because he knows Americans love the way Canadians say that word. Lol. Very cool video! I've heard all this stuff before over the years, but not ever compiled into one video before (that I can recall, anyway). He was very thorough. :)
A pumpkin is a pumpkin but once you carve a face and put a light in it it’s then a Jack o’lantern. Don’t ask me why!
Wood is wood but when you build a table out of it it's a table.