The Ghost Festival. Literature and Language Essay.

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The Ghost Festival
Annual festivals are a tradition in many countries. In the United States, the most renowned festival, aside from Christmas, is Halloween. This is the time of the year when people dress up in scary costumes and trick-or-treat. In China, a similar festival is held every year. However, in China, the festival has a greater meaning. The Hungry ghost festival in China involves more than just fun and scary costumes. It is a time of year when the Chinese people honor the dead with ceremonies and gifts. This essay explores the similarities and differences between the American Halloween festival and the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival.
The Halloween festival can be traced back to the Samhain festival held on the first day of November every year by the Celtic people (Skal 20). The Celtic people believed that the end of summer and the beginning of winter was a time when the worlds between the living and the dead were blurred (Skal 20). So, they designated the first of November as the day of the Samhain festival. Unlike Halloween, the origins of the Hungry Ghost Festival are unknown (Sim). However, in China, people have, for a long time, believed that the seventh month of the lunar calendar is when the gates of hell are opened and the dead start roaming the world in the form of ghosts (Sim). Like the Celtic people, the Chinese believed that the seventh month was when the worlds between the dead and the living were blurred. This belief has continued to this date. And just like the Celts, they designated a certain day, August 15, to celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival (Sim).
For the Celts, the day of the Samhain was when the dead roamed the earth. During this period, they would cause atrocities. Hence the druids would light bonfires where sacrifices would be made to app...