英語翻譯
The Customs of Halloween
The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840’s by Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine.
|The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish CeIts ,but with a ninth-century European custom named Souling.On November 2,All Souls Day,early Christians would walk from village to village begging for“soul cakes”,made out of square pieces of bread with currants.The more soul cakes the beggars would receive,the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors.At the time,it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death,and that prayer,even by stangers,could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore.As the tale is told,a man named Jack,who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster,tricked Satan into climbing a tree.Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk,trapping the devil up the tree.Jack made a deal with the devil that,if he would never tempt him again,he would promise to let him down the tree.According to the folk tale,after Jack died,he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways,but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil.Instead,the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness.The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
The Irish used turnips as their“Jack’s Ianters”originally.But when the immigrants came to Americe,they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips.So the Jack-o-lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin.
Today,even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids.