Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English you might be wondering why is she
wearing a witch's hat that's because it's October and in the United States we're getting ready to
celebrate Halloween this might seem like it has nothing to do with academic English but when you
want to live in an English-speaking country or when you want to learn English to a high level
it's really important to understand the culture and this is one very important day
in American culture so today I'm going to go through a few things that we do to celebrate this
day and I'm going to include as many pictures as I can and then at the end of the video I'm
going to have a special section just of pictures to help you understand more about this holiday
so the first thing that you should know about halloween is that it's always on October 31st
and this is not a federal holiday so that means that we don't have the day off from work or school
it's just a day that we do special things and have fun this holiday is celebrated mostly
in the evening or at night this holiday comes from some European traditions but it's really
not something that we think about we don't think about the origins or where this holiday came from
instead this is a day that we like to do different things and just have a lot of fun
especially for children so the first thing that we want to think about with Halloween
is what do we do leading up to the day we spend at least two weeks preparing for this holiday
sometimes a little longer and these are the things that we do first we get out some Halloween
decorations and these are different for different families some families don't decorate for
Halloween other families go crazy with all kinds of decorations outside their house some people
decorate with a few pieces inside some people decorate both inside and outside but the important
thing with decorations is that they should be scary so we're thinking about black cats,
bats, skeletons, witches, maybe even like fake bloody things gravestones coming out of the grass
in front of a person's house, cobwebs, and spiders those are really common decorations that you see
the next thing that we do is prepare our costumes now when I was a kid we made our costumes and this
was something really fun we planned for a long time what we wanted to be on Halloween and then
our parents helped us to make the costumes nowadays it's possible for people to buy the
costumes for a pretty low price so for convenience and also because those costumes look nice most
people just buy their costumes some families still make their costumes but it's not as common as it
used to be next we sometimes will dress up even before Halloween and this is especially common in
school or even in businesses and this will usually happen a couple days before halloween so for
example today is October 27th so it's four days before halloween my husband went to the dentist
and all of the people working at the dentist's office were dressed up for Halloween today
next we have some fun things that we do to prepare we have treats like maybe Halloween cakes
or other like halloween cookies we maybe have a Halloween party this is especially common for
adults and we also like to watch scary movies before halloween again this depends on the people
i personally don't like watching scary movies and then a very common tradition that we do
before halloween is to make a jack-o-lantern a jack-o'-lantern is a carved pumpkin so we buy
a few pumpkins we use them to decorate outside our house and then a few days
before halloween we actually cut the pumpkin open we scoop out the inside of the pumpkin
and then we take a knife and we carve a design into the front of the pumpkin usually this will
be holes in the pumpkin that make a face and then inside the pumpkin we put a candle
and that becomes a jack-o-lantern we usually have these outside the house or inside the house but
next to the window so that when people walk by they can see the pumpkin with the candle inside
sometimes we will buy these at a pumpkin patch before halloween this is another common tradition
to go to a pumpkin patch and celebrate the beginning of the fall season okay then after
we've done all these preparations it's time to actually celebrate Halloween on October 31st
so the first thing that we do is in the afternoon I'm thinking like
3:00/4:00 we start getting ready putting on our costumes and again we've already prepared the
costume but at this time we're just gonna get dressed in the costume and usually halloween
costumes will have one of three themes it might be a scary costume like a skeleton or a zombie
or a scary witch or it could be a funny or a silly costume i've seen people dress up as a hot dog
or something that really doesn't even make sense sometimes just something silly and other times it
can be something from fantasy like your favorite character from a book or a favorite character from
a movie children love to dress up as animals or also as characters from a Disney movie
okay then we will go trick-or-treating and to go trick-or-treating or to trick-or-treat
is an activity that is done with children and this is important because if you come to the us
and you are an adult you're probably not going to go trick-or-treating unless you are with children
again this is a children's activity we walk around with our kids often we walk with our
children's friends so in a small group and we ring people's doorbells when the door opens the
children say "trick-or-treat" they hold out a bag and the people will put candy inside and they say
thank you and they go to the next house this is something that we usually do for maybe two hours
in the evening and most children do this after dark if the children are really small sometimes
they get scared in the dark and they might go a little bit earlier just when it's starting to get
dark so again trick-or-treating is something that is done with children or teenagers but
adults never go trick-or-treating by themselves it always has to be something that children do
and finally we hand out candy so the way this works is that if you don't have children to go
trick-or-treating with you can spend the evening handing out candy so you can buy halloween treats
usually these are small packages of candy some people opt for more healthy alternatives like
little apples and you keep it in a big bowl next to your front door when the children come and
trick-or-treat to the children ring the doorbell the children say "trick or treat" and you put
a piece of candy or a treat into each child's bag the children say thank you and you wish them
a happy Halloween one of my friends who lives here she's from Brazil and she told me that this is her
favorite holiday of the year because this is the one day of the year that Americans
open their homes to strangers and i think this is true at night when people are walking around the
neighborhood and children are trick-or-treating it gives us a chance to see inside people's homes
people will have their lights on when you ring the doorbell and the children say trick-or-treat
people will open their doors and they are very friendly on this day now what happens if you
live in a neighborhood that doesn't have a lot of children or if you don't feel comfortable handing
out candy that's okay what we do is we turn off the lights and that's a signal to the children
that that house is not giving out candy so as you can imagine Halloween is a really fun day children
love this holiday a lot of children say that this is their favorite day of the year it's just
a great time to be silly to dress up and pretend that you're something else and to have fun going
around the neighborhood and meeting your neighbors to get some candy or treats stay tuned because i'm
going to show you some pictures of Halloween to help you get to know this day a little bit better
I hope you enjoyed this little summary of what halloween is like in the united states
if you have questions about this day make sure to let me know in the comments below or if you've
ever celebrated it let me know what you dressed up as I would love to know about your costumes
take care and i'll see you back here next time