LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Halloween
built 657 days ago
As a secular holiday, Halloween has come to be associated with a number of activities. One is the practice of pulling usually harmless pranks. Celebrants wear masks and costumes for parties and for trick-or-treating, thought to have derived from the British practice of allowing the poor to beg for food, called “soul cakes.” Trick-or-treaters go from house to house with the threat that they will pull a trick if they do not receive a treat, usually candy. Halloween parties often include games such as bobbing for apples, perhaps derived from the Roman celebration of Pomona. Along with skeletons and black cats, the holiday has incorporated scary beings such as ghosts, witches, and vampires into the celebration. Another symbol is the jack-o'-lantern, a hollowed-out pumpkin, originally a turnip, carved into a demonic face and lit with a candle inside.
Source:
Since Halloween's premiere, it has been released on VHS, laserdisc, DVD, UMD and Blu-Ray HD format. In its first year of release on VHS, the film earned $18,500,000 in the United States from rentals.[7] Early VHS versions were released by Media Home Entertainment and Blockbuster Video issued a commemorative edition in 1995. Anchor Bay Entertainment has released several restored editions of Halloween on VHS and DVD, with the most recent being the 2003 two-disc Divimax 25th Anniversary edition with a lenticular 3-D morphing cover and a commentary track including separately recorded contributions by John Carpenter, Debra Hill and Jamie Lee Curtis plus the documentary Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest.[27] The film was included with the 2006 documentary Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Halloween's release.
Source:
Other critics have seen a deeper social critique present in Halloween and subsequent slasher films. According to Vera Dika, the films of the 1980s spoke to the conservative family values advocates of Reagan America.[38] Tony Williams says Myers and other slashers were "patriarchal avengers" who "slaughtered the youthful children of the 1960s generation, especially when they engaged in illicit activities involving sex and drugs."[39] Other critics tend to downplay this interpretation, arguing that the portrayal of Myers as a demonic, superhuman monster inhibited his influence among conservatives.[40]
Source:
On November first was Samhain [Halloween] . . . Fires were built as a thanksgiving to Baal. . . (Kelley, Ruth Edna, The Book of Hallowe'en, Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co. Boston, 1919)
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Halloween