By Jiayi Sun
October 31 was the day before the traditional western festival Halloween, also known as all hallows’ eve, is also the most popular time of the festival. we were lucky to experience the important western festival on this day. Not only the door of every house put on different size of the pumpkin lamps, even the library was decorated with the Halloween decorations.
The date of Halloween is on November 1. Ancient Irish people thought October 31 and November 1 were the time the dead would return to earth. Gradually comes a custom to let the living wear strange clothes, parade to exorcise ghosts. It was also customary to give candy to the dead, and the recipient promised to “pray for the dead” in return. Today, it is a custom for children to wear costumes and masks and collect sweets from door to door on all Hallows’ Eve.
British people who attached importance to the ceremony began to make preparations for the festival early. Every supermarket and store would specially put pumpkin, ghost costumes and other holiday supplies in conspicuous areas. Almost every household would purchase some of them. A few days before the festival, it was common to see children dressed in various supernatural costumes on the road. On October 31, the community, schools and other places held some Halloween parties. Stirling University’s Macbeth center for the arts hosted children in ghostly costumes, and the school’s lake hosted track events for oddly dressed parents and children.
Inside the campus library, there were black spider webs laid on the information desk, beside which hang pumpkin lamps, skeletons, spiders, cotton spider silk placed on the bookshelves in the book exchange area. Strings of pumpkin lamps paper-cut on the computer…All these added the library a touch of festival color.
