T.

J.

English.

Today.

I'm going to be talking to you about Halloween.

Now.

Some of you may know a lot about this, and some of you might not know anything about this.

I recently asked on my Twitter how many of you celebrate Halloween in your country, and I had quite a few replies of people saying They don't now.

To me, it's something normal.

It's something we celebrate every year on the 31st of October.

And it's a big event, especially for Children.

It's what we call a holiday.

Uh, we have holidays such as Christmas, New Year, and we even celebrate something called in the UK.

We celebrate something called Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night, which is on the fifth of November.

Now, I'm not a history teacher, nor is this a history lesson.

So I'm not going to explain how Halloween started because I'm an English teacher.

I don't know how it started, but what I do know is that is something that was particularly popular in the USA, and it still is, and it's something which people from Britain, the U.

K.

And probably parts of Europe they caught on to the idea that when you catch on or somebody caught on to something, it usually means they've seen an idea, and they started doing it themselves also.

So what is it that we do on Halloween?

Well, it's about everything scary and spooky, and it's all revolves really around dressing up.

And when I say dressing up, it can mean two different things in English.

Sometimes you can dress up for an occasion.

You can dress up smart.

For example, if I was going to a very big event, I might dress up in a suit and look smart.

But you can also dress up in fancy dress.

A fancy dress is what we used as a term for dressing up in a costume.

So in Halloween, people dress up in scary costumes.

They might dress up as zombies, skeletons, ghosts, anything that's kind of to do with horror movies or dead people.

Anything to do with death.

Really, it sounds like quite a miserable holiday, but believe it or not, everyone is very, very happy on Halloween.

For me as a child, it wasn't so good for me because I had a really big fear of clowns and any kind of makeup on faces, and for me it was very terrifying.

I couldn't go to any costume parties because I was scared of all of my friends because they were all dressed up in costume and I didn't like that as a child.

But still, I loved Halloween.

I used to enjoy spending time with my family.

We used to do.

We used to carve pumpkins.

Now, this is something almost everybody does, especially if you've got kids.

So you have a pumpkin, and what you do is you carve faces into it.

Usually it will be kind of scary, sharp teeth, all kinds of faces.

You cut into the pumpkin with a knife and you make these faces.

You put a candle inside the pumpkin, and when you light the candle, it will make this face glow in the dark, and we put them in our windows, and we use them to show people that we are celebrating Halloween, just like when people put up.

For example, when people put up their Christmas decorations, they want to show that they're celebrating Christmas and that they're in happy spirits.

So Halloween isn't supposed to be something that's depressing or scary.

Even though it's almost a way of celebrating the dead, it's actually a very happy occasion.

Now.

I'm a little bit too old to go to what we call costume parties where you dress up in a costume.

I am more the sort of person now who on Halloween I will still celebrate the occasion.

I might watch a scary film, Scary Movie.

Besides costume parties, there's also a really important part of Halloween, and this is something that is very, very famous.

It's very famous thing that people do, and it's called trick or treating.

You've probably heard this before, especially if you're interested in the English language.

And trick or treating is when kids dress up, they dress up in the scary costumes and they'll go to people's houses.

It seems like a strange idea, really strange idea.

But they go to people's houses, usually with their parents, who watch them and look after them while they're doing it and they'll knock on the door.

And then when the people answer, they'll say, trick or treat.

It's an old fashioned staying, and what it means is, uh, it basically means give me some sweets or some chocolate or some some kind of treat.

It was an old tradition where if the person whose house you knocked on, if they didn't give you any sweets, any chocolate, any snacks, then people would throw toilet roll at the house, they would throw eggs at the house, and that was the thing.

That's something that used to happen.

But now the rules and laws have changed, and now you could get include some quite serious trouble in, uh, in some countries for doing this.

So I don't recommend you take your kids out to to do this.

This is still something people do.

They still go trick or treating, but the trick doesn't exactly happen anymore.

Most of us do give the kids sweets, chocolate or anything.

Now I'm in Vietnam at the moment, so I'm not sure about how they celebrate it here.

Whether they even do.

I'm not sure I don't think they do, but if I was home at home in England right now, I would be probably having a lot of knocks on my door.

I would have a lot of kids coming up to my door and knocking on the door and they would be asking trick or treat.

So usually I would have to stock up a stock up means to buy lots of things.

So I'm ready and I'm prepared.

I'm stocked up and ready to give them some kind of treat anyway, so that's a quick lesson on Halloween.

There's so much more I could talk about.

But I just wanted to give you a few useful pieces of vocabulary, and I also wanted to just give you an idea of what we do at Halloween.

It seems like a strange thing.

Some people don't understand Christmas.

Some people don't understand Halloween.

There's all kinds of strange traditions in our countries.

In USA in America, in England, in Australia there's there's everyone has their own traditions, and it's good to learn about these, especially if you're learning the language of the country.

So October 31st Monday, this Monday is Halloween.

Please let me know in the comments below whether you celebrate Halloween, whether in your country, this is a thing, does it happen?

And will you be doing something on Monday to celebrate Halloween?

Do you have a lot of kids that come and trick, trick or treat and knock on your door.

Please share your comments below and tell everyone as well as me.

Thank you very much for watching.

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If you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next video and Mm hmm, yeah.