What is Halloween?

Halloween is a holiday which is usually celebrated on October 31. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, and bonfires, costume parties, visiting haunted attractions, carving jack-o'-lanterns, reading scary stories, and watching horror movies. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western world, most commonly in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and at times in parts of New Zealand. In Sweden, the All Saints' official holiday takes place on the first Saturday of November.