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Halloween
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Halloween
Pumpkin jack-o'-lantern carved for Halloween, lit from inside with candles.
Halloween
Why Do People Carve Pumpkins for Halloween?
Lit jack-o-lantern with a carved face sits on a wooden table surrounded by pumpkin pieces, plastic spiders, a knife, and a bowl of pumpkin pulp.
Bag of Halloween candies spilled from an orange bag.
Cartoon haunted house with cobwebs and broken windows, surrounded by jack-o-lanterns, bats, and ghosts. Quiz sections include Jack-o-lantern history, Trick-or-treating, Costumes and disguises, Modern Halloween, and Samhain and early Halloween. Text at the top reads Escape the haunted history.
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Children dressed in halloween costumes and masks. Group of trick or treaters standing on steps in their Halloween costumes. Holiday
Halloween
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Halloween
Halloween Children dressed in Halloween costumes.

Halloween

holiday
Also known as: All Hallows’ Eve
Written by
Tamanna Nangia
Tamanna Nangia is Associate Editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica. She has over five years of experience in editorial processes, handling many different aspects of the publishing process: content development,...
Tamanna Nangia
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
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•History

Halloween, a holiday observed annually on October 31 and noted for its pagan origins and its Christian roots as well as its secular traditions. In much of Europe and most of North America, observance of Halloween is today largely nonreligious, celebrated with parties, spooky costumes, pumpkin carvings called jack-o’-lanterns, and trick or treat. Halloween also marks the beginning of Allhallowtide, a Christian triduum (Latin: “period of three days”) dedicated to remembering the dead that begins...

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