In some parts of Northern Ireland and Canada, they've already managed to dampen the anti-Catholic undertones while keeping the fires burning on November 5.

While the celebrations in Britain do owe a good deal to the American version of the holiday, Rogers notes that Halloween here in the U.S. continues to evolve, too, reflecting our own changing society; accommodating the rites and traditions of other seasonal festivals, including the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday celebrated from October 31-November 2. "Similarly, he suspects Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day may find a way to coexist in Britain. People would carry candles from eleven to midnight. That said, Halloween involves many food traditions… Halloween and Bonfire Night have a common origin they both originated from pagan times, when the evil spirits of darkness had to be driven away with noise and fire. In her book, Fraser quotes what she calls the "sensible" words of an American almanac on the subject in 1746: That's just as well. "I have a distinct sense that Halloween is overtaking or has overtaken Guy Fawkes Night," says James Sharpe of the University of York in England, who has studied the history of these holidays.Some data and much anecdotal evidence back this up: In an article last year on Halloween in the U.K., the "It's certainly true that Halloween is now a 'thing' in the U.K., in a way that wasn't true when I was a child," says Dr. Susan Greenberg, senior lecturer in creative writing at London's University of Roehampton, and a dual national who has lived in the U.K. since childhood.Some Brits are not happy to see Guy Fawkes Day being eclipsed by Halloween.

Halloween is one of the only holidays where we don t gather around the dinner table for a big family meal.

In England, the day of fires became 5th November (Bonfire Night), the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot of 1605, but its closeness to Halloween is more than a coincidence. Although it was a joyous holiday it was also the eve of All Souls Day, so in Medieval times it became customary to pray for the dead on this date.

"Who’s to blame?

Sharpe, for one, proudly considers himself a "Halloween Scrooge," and says that, in his opinion, the Americanized way the holiday is being marked in England is "rather brainless. "The courage of the Powder Plotters is undeniable and even those hottest in condemning their enterprise have paid tribute to it," wrote historian Antonia Fraser in her acclaimed 1996 book on the Plot, While the holiday in his name may be declining in popularity, Fawkes himself has enjoyed a career comeback as a symbol for protest in the 21st century:  the 2006 movie "V for Vendetta," in which the eponymous hero, the anarchist V, wears a Guy Fawkes mask in his efforts to overthrow a fascist British government in a dystopian future, Fawkes's visage has become the unofficial face of the Occupy movement and the hacker group Anonymous.Halloween labors under no such political baggage. Nuts were put on the fire and, according to their behaviour in the flames, forecast faithfulness in sweethearts and the success or failure of marriages.Another tradition from which Halloween customs might have come from is a ninth century European custom, What similarities are there between the Celts and Halloween? The fires of Halloween burned the strongest in Scotland and Ireland, where Celtic influence was most pronounced, although they lingered on in some of the northern counties of England until the early years of the last century. Neither the word Halloween or the date 31 October are mentioned in any From the 19th Century to the present day, 31st October has increasingly acquired a reputation as a night on which ghost, witches, and fairies, are especially active.In the year 835 AD the Roman Catholic Church made 1st November a church holiday to honour all the saints. Besides being offensive, one thing colonial Pope's Day shared with American Halloween and the British Guy Fawkes Day is that all are marked by a degree of bad behavior on the part of some. By

You've got sugar skulls, a traditional Day of the Dead Mexican treat, co-existing with people dressed up as witches. Halloween party in Bristol. Celebrated like the the Fourth of July, fireworks, parades, blazing bonfires, and effigies of Fawkes (and the Pope), were all typical trademarks of the holiday.But increasingly, revelers in the United Kingdom are combining the holidays and what has long been a distinctly British event has taken on more and more of an American flavor. Then again, nobody was walking around dressed up as a banana in 12th-century Scotland. But the Americanised version of Halloween casts a long shadow over the multitude of quirky - and sometimes barmy - English traditions that also … Halloween is celebrated on October 31st and dates back almost 2,000 years when it marked the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. Lost Halloween traditions dating back to 18th-century Ireland also centered around, you guessed it, matchmaking.

smithsonianmag.com It's doubtful that in a country with a large Catholic population, Americans would appropriate Guy Fawkes Day as a holiday of their own, even though in pre-Revolutionary War Boston, it was actually celebrated as "Pope's Day" with effigies of the Pope joining Fawkes as objects of desecration. (*Purgatory is a place where souls are temporarily punished for venial sins. How Halloween Has Taken Over England The British have long celebrated Guy Fawkes Day on November 5, but now the October 31 holiday is a lot more appealing. The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. In England, the day of fires became 5th November (In Lancashire, 'Lating' or 'Lighting the witches' was an important Halloween custom.

The actual history of the Gunpowder Plot (or the Powder Treason as it was also known) has also undergone some re-evaluation. Pope Gregory III named November 1 as All Saints Day in the eighth century, a day to honour 'all saints', which began to include some of the traditions of Samhain.

"I hate to say this, but what's happening is a result of U.S. cultural imperialism," Sharpe says, Some might consider the idea of dismissing Halloween as an American intrusion into British culture ironic considering that its roots are found in Scotland and Ireland. During Samhain, people would wear costumes and light bonfires to ward off evil spirits.