Halloween party ideas

Halloween is a holiday deserving of a big bash. There are so many themes and types of Halloween parties to choose from. Whether your Halloween party will be filled with Halloween treats for the kids and family or mixing up Halloween cocktails for the adults and friends, we have all the Halloween party ideas you need to make your jack-o-lanterns scarier, your treats sweeter and your home Halloween party-friendly.

Make it a Halloween to remember with great decorations, ghoulish poems and songs, and Halloween treat and food ideas.

Scare Your Guests, Not Your Wallet: How to Throw a Budget Halloween Party

Bloody Mary Cocktails
A Bloody Mary is the perfect complement to gory Halloween treats. Cheat a Bloody Mary recipe by simply combining 3 parts chilled tomato juice or Bloody Mary mix with 1 part vodka. Garnish with radish eyeballs.



Gummy Worms in Pudding Dirt
A Halloween classic, serve chocolate pudding topped with gummy worms & crushed cookie dirt. To add a touch of sophistication, serve them in wine glasses or martini glasses. Use hardcover or leather bound books in small stacks to add levels to your serving area.


Witch Finger Cookies
Another Halloween classic, witch finger cookies are made from a simple shortbread cookie recipe. I added green food dye to the cookie dough to create green witch fingers. Brush the almond fingernails with red food dye for manicured fingers.



Meringue Cookie Bones
Meringue cookies are very inexpensive to make because the base ingredients are simply egg whites and sugar. When piped in a bone shape, these are prefect for serving at a Halloween party. These are also seen served on a bed of crushed cookie dirt.



Hard Boiled Egg Eyeballs

Hard boiled eggs are a great budget party hors d'oeuvre. You can pick up a dozen eggs for just a few dollars. Serve them on a simple platter in pairs to resemble sets of spooky eyes. I sprinkled candy corn to dress up the dish

Halloween in Canada and USA

History

Halloween is largely celebrated in the same manner between the two countries of Canada and the United States. In the United States, where lingering Puritan tradition restricted the observance of many holidays, Halloween did not become a holiday until the 19th century. American almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries do not include Halloween in their lists of holidays. The transatlantic migration of nearly two million Irish following the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1849) finally brought the holiday to the United States. Scottish emigration, primarily to Canada before 1870 and to the United States thereafter, brought the Scottish version of the holiday to each country. At the time of substantial Irish and Scottish immigration to North America in the late 19th century, Halloween had a strong tradition of "guising" — children in Ireland and Scotland disguised in costumes going from door to door requesting food or coins. The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street "guising" on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs.


American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts, wrote the first book length history of the holiday in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter Hallowe'en in America; "All Hallowe'en customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries. The taste in Hallowe'en festivities now is to study old traditions, and hold a Scotch party, using Burn's poem Hallowe'en as a guide; or to go a-souling as the English used. In short, no custom that was once honored at Hallowe'en is out of fashion now". The main event for children of modern Halloween in the United States and Canada is trick-or-treating, in which children disguise themselves in costumes and go door to door in their neighborhoods, ringing each doorbell and yelling "Trick or treat!" to solicit a gift of candy or similar items.

Irish-American and Scottish-American societies held dinners and balls that celebrated their heritages, with perhaps a recitation of Robert Burns' poem "Halloween" or a telling of Irish legends, much as Columbus Day celebrations were more about Italian-American heritage than Columbus per se. Home parties centred on children's activities, such as apple bobbing, and various divination games often concerning future romance. Not surprisingly, pranks and mischief were common as well.

At the turn of the 20th century, Halloween had turned into a night of vandalism, with destruction of property and cruelty to animals and people. Around 1912, the Boy Scouts, Boys Clubs, and other neighborhood organizations came together to encourage a safe celebration that would end the destruction that had become so common on this night. School posters during this time called for a "Sane Halloween." Children began to go door to door, receiving treats, rather than playing tricks on their neighbors. This helped to reduce the mischief, and by the 1930s, "beggar's nights" had become very popular. Trick-or-treating became widespread by the end of the 1930s.
[edit] Traditions

The commercialization of Halloween in the United States did not start until the 20th century, beginning perhaps with Halloween postcards (featuring hundreds of designs), which were most popular between 1905 and 1915.Dennison Manufacturing Company (which published its first Halloween catalog in 1909) and the Beistle Company were pioneers in commercially made Halloween decorations, particularly die-cut paper items. German manufacturers specialised in Halloween figurines that were exported to the United States in the period between the two World Wars.
Community Halloween party in Frazier Park, California.

Mass-produced Halloween costumes did not appear in stores until the 1930s, and trick-or-treating did not become a fixture of the holiday until the 1950s. In the 1990s, many manufacturers began producing a larger variety of Halloween yard decorations; before this, the majority of decorations were homemade. Some of the most popular yard decorations are jack-o'-lanterns, scarecrows, witches, orange string lights, inflatable decorations such as spiders, pumpkins, mummies and vampires, and animatronic window and door decorations. Other popular decorations are foam tombstones and gargoyles.

Halloween is now the United States' second most popular holiday (after Christmas) for decorating; the sale of candy and costumes is also extremely common during the holiday, which is marketed to children and adults alike. According to the National Retail Federation, the most popular Halloween costume themes for adults are, in order: witch, pirate, vampire, cat, and clown. Each year, popular costumes are dictated by various current events and pop culture icons. On many college campuses, Halloween is a major celebration, with the Friday and Saturday nearest October 31 hosting many costume parties.

Halloween in England

History

All Saints' Day (All Hallows Day) became fixed on 1 November in 835, and All Souls' Day on 2 November, circa 998. On All Souls' Eve, families stayed up late, and little "soul cakes" were eaten by everyone. At the stroke of midnight, there was solemn silence among households, which had candles burning in every room to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes and a glass of wine on the table to refresh them. The tradition of giving soul cakes that originated in Britain and Ireland was known as souling, often seen as the origin of modern Trick or Treating in North America, and souling continued in areas of northern England as late as the 1930s, with children going from door to door singing songs and saying prayers for the dead in return for cakes or money.[14] The English Reformation in the 16th century de-emphasised holidays like All Hallows Day or All Souls Day and their associated eves.

Traditions

In parts of northern England, there is a traditional festival called Mischief Night, which falls on the 30th of October. During the celebration, children play a range of "tricks" (ranging from minor to more serious) on adults. One of the more serious tricks might include the unhinging of garden gates (which were often thrown into ponds or moved far away). In recent years, such acts have occasionally escalated to extreme vandalism, sometimes involving street fires.

Bobbing for apples is a well-established association with Halloween. In the game, attempts are made (using only one's mouth) to catch an apple placed in a water-filled barrel. Once an apple is caught, it is sometimes peeled and tossed over the shoulder in the hope that the strips would fall into the shape of a letter, which would be the first initial of the participant's true love.

Other traditions include making toffee apples and apple tarts. Apple tarts may be baked with a coin hidden inside, and nuts of all types are traditional Halloween fare.

There has been increasing concern about the potential for antisocial behaviour, particularly among older teenagers, on Halloween. Cases of houses being "egg-bombed" or having lit fireworks posted through the letterbox (especially when the occupants do not give money or gifts) have been reported, and the BBC reported that for Halloween 2006, police forces stepped up patrols to respond to such mischief.

Halloween in Scotland

Scotland, having a shared Gaelic culture with Ireland, has celebrated the festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-win) robustly for many centuries. The autumn festival is pre-Christian Celtic in origin, and is known in Scottish Gaelic as Oidhche Shamhna, the "Summer's night." During the fire festival, souls of the dead wander the Earth and are free to return to the mortal world until dawn. Traditionally, bonfires and lanterns (samhnag in Scottish Gaelic) would be lit to ward off the phantoms and evil spirits that emerge at midnight. The term Samhainn or Samhuinn is used for the harvest feast, and an t-Samhain is used for the entire month of November.

History

As in Ireland, the exact customs involved with celebrating Halloween from ancient times to pre-industrialised Scotland are lost and lack primary documentation to distinguish the ancient customs from the modern counterpart. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 was repealed in the 1950s. The name Halloween is first attested in the 16th century as a Scottish shortening of the fuller All-Hallows-Even, that is, the night before All Hallows Day.[9] Scotland's National Bard, Robert Burns, portrayed some of the customs in his poem "Hallowe'en" (1785).

Halloween was seen as the time when the division between the world of the living and the otherworld was blurred. Many of the traditional customs derive from ancient divination practices and ways of trying to predict the future. By the 18th century, most of the customs were methods for young people to search for their future husbands or wives. As Samhainn was originally a harvest festival, many of these practices are connected with food or the harvest and fertility. One old custom associated with the Western Isles was to put two large nuts in the hearth of a peat fire to represent the person and his or her intended spouse. If the nuts curled together when they warmed up, it was deemed to be a good omen; but if they jumped apart, then it was time to look for another sweetheart.[citation needed] Islanders from Lewis traditionally poured ale into the sea as a libation to a marine God called "Seonaidh," or "Shoney," on Celtic Samhain or Halloween so that he would send seaweed to the shore to fertilise the fields for the coming year. Seonadh in Scottish Gaelic means sorcery, augury, or Druidism, and it is possible that the custom of Shonaidh is the direct link to an ancient form of Celtic god worship that has been Christianised.[citation needed] As "Seonaidh," which is Gaelic "Johnny," it may also be a reference to one of St. John and an invocation of him.

Fire rituals were also important. Great bonfires were lit in villages or by individual families, with the resultant ashes being used to form a circle. One stone for each member of the household was kept inside this circle near the circumference. If any stone were displaced or seemed broken by next morning, the person to whom that stone belonged was believed to be destined to die within a year.[citation needed] A similar rite in northern Wales includes a great bonfire called Coel Coeth, built for each family on Halloween; later, the members of the household threw a white stone marked in their name into the ashes. Upon the next morning, all the stones were searched for, and if any stone was missing, the person who threw that stone was believed to be destined to die before next Halloween.[citation needed] In particular, the village of Fortingall, in Perthshire, held festivities on Càrn na Marbh, "Mound of the Dead." This was the focal point of a Samhain festival. A great fire, or "Samhnag," was lit atop it each year. The whole community took hands when it was blazing and danced around the mound, both sunwise and antisunwise. As the fire began to wane, some of the younger boys took burning embers from the flames and ran throughout the field with them, finally throwing them into the air and dancing over them as they lay glowing on the ground. When the last embers were showing, the boys would have a leaping competition across the remains of the fire, reminiscent of the Beltane festival. When it was finished, the young people went home to duck for apples and practise divination. There was no Scottish tradition of "guising" here, the bonfire being the absolute centre of attention until it was consumed. The Samhain celebrations here apparently came to an end relatively early, in 1925.

Traditions

In Scotland, folklore, including that of Halloween, revolves around the ancient Celtic belief in faeries (Sidhe, or Sith, in modern Gaelic). Children who ventured out carried a traditional lantern (samhnag) with a devil face carved into it to frighten away the evil spirits. Such Halloween lanterns were made from a turnip, or "Neep" in Lowland Scots, with a candle lit in the hollow inside. In modern times, however, such lanterns use pumpkins, as in North American traditions, possibly because it is easier to carve a face into a pumpkin than into a turnip. Due to this, the practice of hollowing out pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns may have its roots in this practice.

Houses were also protected with the same candle lanterns. If the spirits got past the protection of the lanterns, the Scottish custom was to offer the spirits parcels of food to leave and spare the house another year. Children, too, were given the added protection by disguising them as such creatures in order to blend in with the spirits. If children approached the door of a house, they were also given offerings of food (Halloween being a harvest festival), which served to ward off the potential spirits that may lurk among them. This is where the origin of the practice of Scottish "guising" (a word that comes from "disguising"), arose, with the tradition of children going from door to door in costume. It is now a key feature of the tradition of trick-or-treating practised in North America.

In modern-day Scotland, this old tradition survives, chiefly in the form of children going door to door "guising" in this manner; that is, dressed in a disguise (often as a witch, ghost, monster, or another supernatural being) and offering entertainment of various sorts. If the entertainment is enjoyed, the children are rewarded with gifts of sweets, fruits, or money., There is no Scottish trick-or-treat tradition as in North America; on the contrary, trick or treating is an outgrowth of these Scottish guising customs.[citation needed]

Popular games played on the holiday include "dunking" for apples (i.e., retrieving an apple from a bucket of water using only one's mouth). In some places, the game has been replaced (because of fears of contracting saliva-borne illnesses in the water) by standing over the bowl holding a fork in one's mouth and releasing it in an attempt to skewer an apple using only gravity. Another popular game is attempting to eat, while blindfolded, a treacle- or jam-coated scone on a piece of string hanging from the ceiling. Sometimes the blindfold is left out, because it is already difficult to eat the scone. In all versions, however, the participants cannot use their hands.

In 2007, Halloween festival organisers in Perthshire said they wanted to move away from U.S.-style celebrations in favour of more culturally accurate traditions. Plans include abandoning the use of pumpkins and reinstating traditional activities, such as a turnip lantern competition and dooking (ducking) for apples.

Halloween in France

Some sources say that Celts in northern France also celebrated Halloween, but this is unconfirmed. In any case, Halloween is not a traditional French holiday, yet it becomes more popular every year. How and why this is so is a combination of cultural influence and corporate marketing.

The French had been hearing about Halloween from foreign residents and tourists and in their English classes for years before the holiday ever showed its (masked) face in France. In 1982, the American Dream bar/restaurant in Paris began celebrating Halloween. At first it had to explain the holiday to each customer, but since about 1995, French customers have tended to be more and more familiar with Halloween.

The Mask Museum in Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent was opened by Cesar group in 1992, and the owners started working to expand Halloween in France the following year.

Philippe Cahen, president of Optos Opus, claims that he single-handedly "imported" Halloween to France in 1995, despite admitting that Halloween already existed there (nope, doesn't seem like a logical claim to me either). Cahen created Le Samain cake in 1997 and registered the word "Halloween" as a world trademark. He also challenged 25 artists to come up with works with a Halloween theme, and the results were exhibited at the Victor Hugo Clinic.

In 1996, the village of St. Germain-en-Laye held a Halloween party on 24 October in the middle of the day, to give locals an idea of what it was all about.

Meanwhile, companies like France Télécom, McDonald's, Disney, and Coca Cola began using pumpkins and other Halloween images and ideas in publicity campaigns. This simultaneously increased French people's knowledge about Halloween and made it seem like another imposition of American culture.

How is Halloween celebrated in France?
Halloween in France is usually celebrated by costumed people of all ages going to parties at friends' homes, restaurants, bars, or clubs. The costumes themselves tend to be traditionally "scary" - mummies, ghosts, goblins, witches, and vampires - rather than the cute costumes like princesses, superheroes, and the cartoon character of the day which are popular in the US. Some recreation centers encourage kids to make their own costumes.

Trick-or-treating is getting to be more common. It started out store-to-store, rather than house-to-house, but the latter is picking up. However, Halloween occurs during the mid-season school break, which slows it down a bit.

Stores, malls, restaurants, offices, and homes decorate their windows; pastry and candy shops make up special desserts and candies; and many different kinds of companies use Halloween in their ads. Supermarkets sell pumpkins for jack-o'-lanterns and candy companies are now marketing candy in the traditional Halloween format: one big bag filled with lots of little packages, which may encourage trick-or-treating.

The growing demand for jack-o'-lanterns during Halloween has been a boon for pumpkin growers. There is even a pumpkin patch at a farm outside of Paris where people can pick their own.

Halloween in France is rather controversial, due to the perception of corporate and cultural influence, as well as the fact that it is not a typical French holiday and some people still don't understand what is being celebrated. Because Halloween is seen as an American celebration, some French people refuse to enjoy it, having decided to include it in their anti-American boycott. It's too early to tell whether Halloween will develop into a long-term tradition; once the novelty wears off, it may turn out to be just a fad. And yet, interestingly, the French have been celebrating the ideas at the very heart of Halloween (respect for the dead) for centuries. 31 October to 2 November have traditionally been spent, especially by older generations, visiting cemeteries, honoring saints, and attending religious services.

Halloween in Ireland

Snap-Apple Night by Daniel Maclise portrays a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The young children on the right bob for apples. A couple in the center play "Snap-Apple," which involves retrieving an apple hanging from a string. The couples at left play divination games.

Halloween is a significant cultural event in Ireland; it is widely celebrated. It is known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna (Irish pronunciation: [ˈiːhə haunˠə] ee-hah how-nah), literally "Samhain Night." In the Irish language, Samhain is the name for the month of November. Pre-Christian Celts had an autumn festival, Samhain (Irish pronunciation: [ˈsˠaunʲ], from the Old Irish ˈˈsamainˈˈ), "End of Summer," a pastoral and agricultural "fire festival" or feast, when the dead revisited the mortal world and large communal bonfires would hence be lit to ward off evil spirits. Costumes and masks being worn at Halloween goes back to the Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them. Samhnag — Candle lanterns carved from turnips, were part of the traditional festival. Large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and placed in windows, also used to ward off harmful spirits.

History

Pope Gregory IV standardized the date of All Saints' Day, or All Hallows' Day, on November 1 in the name of the entire Western Church in 837. As the Church day began at sunset, the holiday coincided exactly with Samhain. It is claimed that the choice of date was consistent with the common practice of leaving pagan festivals and buildings intact (e.g., the Pantheon) while overlaying a Christian meaning,however no reliable documentation indicates such a motivation in this case. While the Celts might have been content to move All Saints' Day from their own previous date of April 20, the rest of the world celebrating it on May 13, it is speculated without evidence that they were unwilling to give up their preexisting autumn festival of the dead and continued to celebrate Samhain.

Traditions

On Halloween night, adults and children dress up as creatures from the underworld (e.g., ghosts, ghouls, zombies, witches, and goblins), light bonfires, and enjoy spectacular fireworks displays – in particular, the city of Derry is home to the largest organized Halloween celebration on the island, in the form of a street carnival and fireworks display. It is also common for fireworks to be set off for the entire month preceding Halloween as well as a few days after. Halloween was perceived as the night during which the division between the world of the living and the otherworld was blurred so that spirits of the dead and inhabitants from the underworld were able to walk free on the earth. It was believed necessary to dress as a spirit or otherworldly creature when venturing outdoors to blend in, and this is where dressing in such a manner for Halloween comes from. This gradually evolved into trick-or-treating, because children would knock on their neighbours' doors in order to gather fruit, nuts, and sweets for the Halloween festival. Salt was once sprinkled in the hair of the children to protect against evil spirits.

Houses are frequently adorned with pumpkins, or traditional turnip carved into scary faces; lights or candles are sometimes placed inside the carvings, resulting in an eerie effect. The traditional Halloween cake in Ireland is the barmbrack, which is a fruit bread. The Halloween Brack traditionally contained various objects baked into the bread and was used as a fortune-telling game. In the barmbrack were a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin (originally a silver sixpence), and a ring. Each item, when received in the slice, was supposed to carry a meaning to the person concerned: the pea, the person would not marry that year; the stick, "to beat one's wife with," would have an unhappy marriage or continually be in disputes; the cloth or rag, would have bad luck or be poor; the coin, would enjoy good fortune or be rich; and the ring, would be married within the year. Commercially produced barmbracks for the Halloween market still include a toy ring.

Games are often played, such as bobbing for apples, in which apples, peanuts, and other nuts and fruit and some small coins are placed in a basin of water. The apples and nuts float, but the coins, which sink, are harder to catch. Everyone takes turns catching as many items possible using only their mouths. In some households, the coins are embedded in the fruit for the children to "earn" as they catch each apple. Another common game involves the hands-free eating of an apple hung on a string attached to the ceiling. Games of divination are also played at Halloween, but are becoming less popular.

Lunchtime (the midday meal, sometimes called "dinner" in Ireland), on Halloween is called Colcannon.Babou

Halloween games

There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. One common game is dunking or apple bobbing, in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drop the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably leads to a very sticky face.

Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of divination. A traditional Irish and Scottish form of divining one's future spouse is to carve an apple in one long strip, then toss the peel over one's shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name. Unmarried women were told[who?] that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before marriage, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The telling of ghost stories and viewing of horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of television series and Halloween-themed specials (with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before the holiday, while new horror films are often released theatrically before the holiday to take advantage of the atmosphere.