What the hell is Halloween?

Welcome to the Halloween lesson. My name is Jack, Jack-O'-Lantern. Do you want to find

out about me? Hello. It's Halloween -- my favorite time

of the year. I'm dressed like a frog. This is my costume, not my natural attire for teaching

at EngVid. My name is Ronnie. I'm a frog today. I'm going to teach you about my favorite holiday:

Halloween. You might be asking yourself, "What the hell is 'Halloween'? And why is Ronnie

wearing a frog costume? What is she doing?" Phew! That's hot. So what I'm going to go

through is what we do in Canada and in America for Halloween.

The first thing -- and the most exciting thing -- that we do when we're children is we go

trick or treating. So we wear a costume like this. Any costume you want, you can wear.

A lot of little girls like to be princesses or witches. It's really, really up to you.

It's your imagination -- let your imagination run wild. You can choose any costume you would

like. So what we do is we dress up in costumes and we go around our neighborhood to our houses

that live -- to the people that live around us, and we ring their doorbells, and we go,

"Trick or treat!" And the lovely people give us candy for free. We don't have to do anything.

You don't have to pay them money. They just give you free candy. As a child, I loved this,

as you can imagine. Little Ronnie going to houses, "Trick or treat! Give me candy." So

"trick or treat" -- "trick" means, like, a joke. And "treat" means like a snack or candy.

A long, long, long, long time ago, this actually had a meaning, but we'll get to that later.

As I've written down on the board too, we wear costumes -- anything you want. Some people

spend a lot of money on their costumes. I got mine in Japan, in Hokkaido. I think it

was $12, my frog costume. We wear costumes because it's fun to be another person. Usually,

trick or treating is only for children because when we get to a certain age, we can buy our

own candy -- buy your own candy. Get a job, okay? And when we get older, we still wear

costumes. It's fun. We usually go to a Halloween party. People dress up, drink a lot, have

fun. This thing, this guy right here -- it's not

a pumpkin. This is a pumpkin. A "pumpkin" is a fruit, and it's orange or it can be green,

and we usually eat it, but Jack-O'-Lanterns are very different. A Jack-O'-Lantern actually

has carvings into the pumpkin. "What a strange thing that you guys do, isn't it?" Jack-O'-Lantern

is a pumpkin with a face in it. So Jack-O'-Lantern has a face, and it's actually a pumpkin.

"Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!" Is what we used to say. Let's

go back in history. "Why? What is this? What are you doing here?" We have -- 2000 years

ago, the Celtic people -- now, these are people that lived in Ireland and Scotland and the

north of France -- they had a belief -- it's getting hot in here, guys -- that on October

31st, which is actually called "All Hallows' Eve", that dead people returned to earth.

Now, I know if you are from Japan, you have a holiday called "Obon". I'm not really good

with the pronunciation. You believe that your ancestors come back to earth and visit you.

In Mexico -- arriba! What up? -- you guys have "Day of the Dead". Again, you believe

that the dead come back to the earth. This is the exact same thing, except in North America,

we have made it so that we get candy -- same idea.

So the pronunciation of this word -- Ah! Jeeze! Yeah. There's been some controversy of it.

Because it is a Celtic word -- it looks like it should be "Samhaiam" -- but it's actually

"Sah wvin". Now, there's been some debate on is it Scottish Gaelic? Is it Gaelic? I

honestly do not speak Gaelic, obviously, and I've just looked on the Internet -- apparently,

it's called "Sah wvin". Sometimes it's called "So wvin" -- I don't know. Just call it Halloween,

okay? So 2000 years ago, people believed that dead people returned to the earth. Some of

these people were good people, but some of the people were evil, bad people. So what

they would do is they would wear animal skin -- like a frog -- costumes to disguise themselves

so that the evil spirits didn't take their souls. So the costumes come from people actually

wearing animal skins to disguise themselves. So we've stolen this, but unfortunately, we've

made our costumes cute or sexy. "Hey, look! I'm a sexy pirate." Good. Why don't you be

a pirate with one eye that eats people, okay? Then we have trick or treat. Trick or treat

happened probably after this, and a long story short, people would go to other people's houses,

and they would pray for their ancestors. In return, the richer people would give the poor

people food. So this is how we get the door-to-door trick or treating.

Jack-O'-Lantern, this guy: Jack was, apparently, a real man. He was a man. He apparently had

a deal with the devil that he'd sell his soul, blah, blah, blah -- selling his soul to the

devil. Long story short, he tricked the devil, and he actually made it to heaven. But the

powers that be above, said, "Oh, Jack, you're not coming into heaven." And they give him

one single coal for him to find his way to heaven. What Jack did, being a very smart

gentleman, is he put the coal inside a turnip. Now, a turnip is a fruit, and it kind of looks

like a vegetable. There're many different kinds of turnips, but the typical, I guess,

Celtic turnip or turnip from the U.K. would look like this. It's a big pear. So the story

goes that he put a coal, a lit coal, which would give off light, inside a turnip. Now,

when the people came from Ireland or from the United Kingdom to North America, they

didn't have turnips; they had pumpkins. So instead of using a turnip, they used the pumpkin,

carved a face, put the light in it, and ta-dah! Jack. The guy's name was Jack.

Devil's Night, Devil's Night. This is the one night of the year where you can do whatever

you want and not get arrested -- not true. Devil's Night is a tradition -- it's kind

of a bad tradition. It's October 30th. This is not based on history, but it happens the

night before Halloween. Halloween is every October 31st. It doesn't matter if it's a

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday; it's always October 31st.

Devil's Night is the night before, where traditionally people go out and just cause a ruckus. They

put toilet paper on buildings; they take pumpkins and they smash them. All that time and energy

that I had to make Jack perfect -- smashed. Devil's Night is pretty bad.

So hopefully, now you know why I get so excited about Halloween. It's based on Celtic history;

it has a meaning; and in your country, maybe you have something similar to this.

Well, I'm off to steal candy from children. Goodbye.