Tradition
POLAND
November Celebrations
by Agnieszka
Halloween is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October.
Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, attending costume parties,
decorating, carving pumpkins, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting
haunted
attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.
It becomes a popular celebration also in Poland, but traditional polish custom is
celebrating Feast of All Saints on 1th of November and All Souls’ Day on 2nd of
November. In these days we go to the cemetery, visit the graves, bring some flowers
and light candles. Then we feel an atmosphere of seriousness and reflection.
On 1th of November we mention people recognized as saints an on 2sn of November we
mention all dead people espespecially relatives dead. Fomerly people belived that on All
Souls’ Day souls return to their earlier homes and stay with living people, so residents of
houses couldn’t do then a lot of things, because some works could hurt souls. The
tradition of putting candles on the graves is derived from th pagan custom of lighting
bonfires on the graves. People believed that candles will warm the souls.
Maybe our celebrations aren’t as funny as Halloween, but they are Polish traditions and
parts of Polish culture.