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Hawaii has a special October event called
"the Aloha Festival," sometimes described as the
"Mardi Gras of the Pacific."
Columbus Day is celebrated the second Monday every October.
Germany's Oktoberfest originally began on October 17, 1810,
the wedding day of King Ludwig I. The annual festival starts
much earlier, often in September. In America, special holidays
start earlier well. Christmas celebrations and sales start in
September, and even July in some department stores.
Dayight Savings Time ends every year at 2:00 A.M. local time
on the last Sunday of October
October's flower is the calendula.
October is the tenth month in the Gregorian calendar, received
its name from the Latin numeral octo meaning "eight",
because in the original Roman calendar it was the eighth month.
October begins (astrologically) with the sun in the sign of
Libra and ends in the sign of Scorpio.
Halloween
From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31,
usually by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door
collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the Western world,
though most commonly in the United States, the United Kingdom,
the Republic of Ireland, Canada and sometimes in Australia and
New Zealand. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought older
versions of the tradition to North America in the 19th century.
Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part
of American pop culture in the late 20th century.
The form "Halloween" derives from Hallowe'en, an
old contraction, still retained in Scotland, of "All
Hallow's Eve," so called as it is the day before the
Catholic All Saints holy day, which used to be called "All
Hallows," derived from All Hallowed Souls. In Ireland,
the name was Hallow Eve and this name is still used by some
older people. Halloween was formerly also sometimes called
All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities
in various northern European pagan traditions, until it was
appropriated by Christian missionaries (along with Christmas
and Easter, two other traditional northern European pagan
holidays) and given a Christian reinterpretation. Halloween
is also known as the Day of the Dead, and it is a day of celebration
for Wiccans and other modern pagan traditions, though the
holiday has lost its religious connotations among the populace
at large.
Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland,
presumably named after the pookah, a mischievous spirit.
In the United Kingdom in particular, the pagan Celts celebrated
the Day of the Dead on Halloween. The spirits supposedly rose
from the dead and, in order to attract them, food was left
on the doors. To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore
masks. When the Romans invaded Britain, they embellished the
tradition with their own, which is the celebration of the
harvest and honoring the dead. These traditions were then
passed on to the United States.
Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European
cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the "liminal"
times of the year when the spirit world can make contact with
the natural world and when magic is most potent (see, for
example, Catalan mythology about witches).
Anoka, Minnesota, USA, the self-proclaimed "Halloween
Capital of the World," celebrates with a large civic
parade.
Kids
today think the world revolves around them. In my day, the
sun revolved around the world, and the world was perched on
the back of a giant tortoise.
(Jonathan Paul)
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