Is there Halloween in China?

In America, people celebrate Halloween every year on October 31. It is a traditional holiday which initiates the triduum of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead. In China, although people don’t celebrate Halloween, there is a holiday similar to Halloween: the Ghost Festival.

The Ghost Festival is a traditional Buddhist and Taoist festival. Based on the Lunar calendar, it is on the 15th night of the seventh month, which is known as the Ghost month. In Chinese culture, people believe that the spirits of ancestors and deaths will visit the living during the day, so they need to prepare for the ghosts’ visitings as well as to bless the living. Thinking this way, the Ghost Festival became similar to a day for commemoration instead of a celebration.

There are various methods to express the yearning and grief for the ancestors or the dead. For example, people will make lotus lanterns and light the candles inside of them. At night, they will put all of those lotus lanterns into the river, so they can see that there are thousands of them floating in the river, and people will pray on the river bank. Also, Chinese people have made paper resembled money and burned it as an offering to the dead. While burning the paper money, people will speak about their lives to let the deaths know how they are doing and give blessings to the spirits of death so that they can live a life with peace and joy in another world. Chinese always believe that fire can transfer the messages to the places they can’t reach.

After all, very different from Halloween, Chinese don’t have the traditions like “Trick or Treat” or dressing up as ghosts or movie characters. For Chinese people, the Ghost Festival gives them an opportunity to share their sorrows with other people, to transfer their love to the dead, and to bless a better future.