7 - Halloween

Hello and welcome to episode 7 of the Gold Forest English podcast. My name is Jordan and today is October 31st and I want to talk about Halloween. Halloween is different all over the world but as I come from England I will talk a little bit about my experience of Halloween in England. 

So when I was growing up I grew up in a Christian family, and when I was very young, my parents were not very comfortable with me celebrating Halloween. So while my friends were able to go out in the evening and collect candy and sweets, I had to stay at home. But as I grew a bit older, my parents became more relaxed about it, and they allowed me to go out with my friends and with my brother to do ‘trick or treating’, to visit different houses and collect some candy from them. 

This common Halloween activity usually involves the children dressing up in costumes and maybe visiting people's homes to ask for candy, or they might go to Halloween parties. But the way that children dress up tends to be different depending on which country you're from.

Traditionally in the UK, children's Halloween costumes are more spooky, more scary. There are more common costumes like ghosts and skeletons and witches. Whereas in America, Halloween costumes are more fun and like popular characters, maybe superheroes and famous people, things like that. I think that the American style of costume parties and costume style, I think that's a lot more fun and enjoyable for children who might want to dress up as their favourite superhero or princess. So I think that in recent years this style has become more popular in England and the traditional English Halloween costumes of spooky skeletons, ghosts and monsters has become less popular and more fun costumes have become more popular, which I think is a good thing. 

In England, many children go to Halloween parties, where a house or venue is all decorated with Halloween props and images to make it look spooky and scary, fake spider webs and things like that, and they might play Halloween games. 

A very popular Halloween game is ‘bobbing for apples’, which normally involves a large container, maybe like a large bucket or bowl, filled with water, and then some apples are floating in the water. The apples are floating on the top of the water, and the children have to get the apples out of the bucket without using their hands. So they have to kneel down beside the bucket, with their hands behind their back and use their teeth to pick up the apples from the water. This traditional game might have become less popular over the last several years due to Covid and people being more aware of viruses and transferring sickness. 

One of my strongest Halloween memories was actually in the United States. Around October, I had gone on holiday with my family to America to visit my grandparents - who used to live there. And it was Halloween day and we were in some part of Florida and we visited a shopping mall. And I was so surprised because I found that in the shopping mall, each shop in the mall had set up a big bowl of candy outside the front of the shop for children to walk around and collect candy from. Like I said before, traditionally children would trick or treat at people's houses, but it seemed like in that part of Florida there would be some children who could not easily visit many houses, and so they would go to a shopping mall and were able to collect candy from each shop instead of going to people's houses and knocking on their doors.

So, I had this very strong memory of being so surprised (of course a happy surprise) and with my brother we went around each of the shops and were able to get a lot of candy on that day. It felt like, it felt very lucky, it felt a fantastic surprise to be able to get some candy in this way, instead of needing to go and knock on people's doors like we did traditionally.

Now, as I am an adult, although I still enjoy candy, I should not enjoy it so much. I should not eat as much candy as I used to. So for me and for many other adults, one of the best things about Halloween now is seeing all of the children in their costumes. All the cute little outfits that the parents have dressed their children up in is very enjoyable to see how cute and funny the kids look in their costumes. I think this is a very enjoyable part for adults at Halloween season and of course the Halloween, of course the children can enjoy their candy, their chocolates and their sweets. 

So, whatever you are choosing to do today for your Halloween celebration, maybe you're going to a party, maybe you're doing nothing at all, whatever you choose to do...I hope you have a good day, and happy Halloween! I'll see you in the next episode.