Halloween Around the World: How 8 Countries Celebrate the Spooky Season

Almost every culture has a moment when the living honor the dead, the harvest ends, and the dark half of the year begins. American Halloween is just one branch of a much older, wider tree.

Here is how eight countries mark the season — and what their traditions reveal about the universal urge to light a candle against the dark.

On November 1 and 2, families build ofrendas — home altars draped in marigolds, sugar skulls, and the favorite foods of those who have died. It is joyful, not mournful: the dead are welcomed home for a reunion.

Cemeteries fill with music, food, and orange marigold petals laid in paths to guide spirits back. The 2017 animated film Coco brought the tradition to a global audience.

Ireland is the birthplace of Samhain, the Celtic festival that became Halloween. Bonfires still blaze, turnips were the original jack-o'-lanterns, and the traditional barmbrack — a fruit bread — hides a ring (you'll marry), a coin (you'll be rich), and a rag (you'll be neither).

In Scotland, children go 'guising' — performing a song, joke, or trick for treats rather than just saying 'trick or treat.' Dooking for apples (hands-free, in a basin of water) and burning nuts to predict romance were once the main event.

On Ognissanti (All Saints' Day, November 1), Italian families tend graves and leave a candlelit meal for the departed. In some regions, the dead were once said to return and gather fava beans left on the table — a seat reserved for the unseen guest.

Halloween arrived in Japan in the 2000s via theme parks and expat events, then exploded into enormous street costume parades — especially Tokyo's Kawasaki Parade and the Shibuya scramble. Cosplay culture made it a natural fit.

Trick-or-treating as we know it crystallized in North America in the 1920s and 1930s, with costumes, candy, and community parades. Anoka, Minnesota, calls itself the Halloween Capital of the World for its century-old parades.

Light in the dark. Food for the dead. A night when the ordinary rules bend. Whether it's marigolds in Oaxaca or a carved turnip in Donegal, the thread is the same: we remember, we feast, and we make the dark a little less lonely.