Do we even know what is Halloween ?

Awareness in India is quite limited as to why we celebrate Halloween and its origin. Its rather sad, that we want to pick up fancy festivals like St Patrick’s day, La Tomatino Festival, Valentines day, Easter, Halloween, and make it a part of our “fancy party theme”. We handpick some of the favorite festivals from other cultures and make them a part of ours without actually understanding their significance and the altered nature of the celebration, which we will resort to.

We don’t even take in consideration the consequences of bringing another western party theme just because we need to add a theme to our everyday party list. The enthusiasm to know more about the Indian culture is dying as time goes by. The youth is already bored of celebrating Indian festivals evidently, and they want new things and events to keep them active in the social circuit. A little bit of fun does not harm, but it’s important that we don’t celebrate western festivals at the cost of overshadowing our own. We possess one of the richest histories in the entire world and people from other cultures are always curious to know more about Hindu mythology and the diversity of festivals we celebrate in different parts of the country.

It is important that we are aware of the history and the meaning behind celebrating Halloween. Lets get educated about this spooky day, before we go all crazy with the costume parties and scary pranks. Halloween is more than 2000 years old, originated in Britain. The real origins are dated back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. People believed that during this time, the dead come to commune with their loved ones. All saints day aka Halloween is the day when people believe that souls from the other side come back to earth and roam freely on the streets. Also, the reason why kids used to dress up as angels, demons or ghosts and go door to door was to in order to impersonate the ghosts so that they stay away from them on this day. The trick or treat tradition is quite an interesting one. In exchange of sweets or “soul cakes” as ancient people used to say, kids prayed for their departed friends and family.

We try to imitate anything fancy which fits in our pockets. We should be proud and aware of our own festivals to an extent that we celebrate them with as much joy and enthusiasm as we celebrate other festivals. The more we tend to get these western festivals into our culture, the harder it will be for us to imbibe the importance of Indian festivals in the minds of our future generation. There is no restriction to having fun while adapting ourselves to other’s traditions. But, it is important that we are aware of their significance as well and not just blindly celebrate them as “fancy party” themes.