Samhaine Festival

The Samhaine Festival, sometimes called Samhaine's Eve, is an annual celebration held on the 31st Sun of the 10th moon, 10 / 31. It is said to be the day where souls from the departed are free to roam the land, searching for bodies to inhabit so that they can live again. Children and young adults dress up in costumes to mimic the wandering souls so that they avoid being possessed by actual souls, and go around asking for candy from townsfolk. Some say that wandering souls occasionally blend in with these costumed festival-goers and show up to ask for candy, only to disappear as soon as you turn around.

The festival of Samhaine originally started as a small-town holiday, where children would cut eye-holes into white tablecloths or bedsheets and drape them around their bodies, claiming to lost souls, and would go around town asking people for an offering, often a fruit or vegetable, or a few coins. From this, the image of the "ghost", a soul departed from the deceased and now cursed to roam the mortal world, was popularized. Villagers who did not dress up would carve pumpkins into faces of the deceased, and place them on their porches with lit candles within them, to attempt to trick the roaming souls into believing the pumpkin was their body, so they did not take the body of those who lived in the house.

Over time the celebration gained notoriety and morphed into what it is now known as, as day where young people dress up in costumes to go door to door asking for candy, and people place carved pumpkins outside their doors for seasonal decor. The act of asking for candy (an "offering") is meant to represent the idea of a lost soul asking searching for a body. In recent times, many city-folk often host large-scale costume parties, where all guests are required to dress up. These parties often feature dances, apple-bobbing, and "best costume" contests.

Orange (the colour of ripe pumpkins) and black (the colour of shadow) have been popularized as the symbolic colours of this holiday.