Oral Speech

Oral Communication

Halloween Traditions around the World

General purpose: To Inform

Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about how different countries celebrate Halloween

Everyone knows about Halloween. It is one of the most favored holidays in America. Halloween is also the world’s oldest holiday, dating back to pagan time. I decided to do my informative speech on Halloween traditions because it is a fun topic to discuss and see how everyone is different. When you think of Halloween you think of candy, costumes, parties, and pranks. You all probably remember running up to the houses thinking they have the best candy and ending up with an apple or better yet a cheap Halloween pencil that the eraser would fall off after one time using it. One of my favorite traditions in my family was every year my mom would take the family to Jo-Ann fabrics and look through all the costume patterns and choosing what we wanted to be, my mom would then get everything she needed and sewed the costume together. We would always have the costumes that would win the costume prizes at the school parties. But some countries have different traditions that represent them Ireland is considered to be where Halloween started. Ireland Celebrates Halloween much like the U.S. One of their traditional foods eaten on Halloween is a barnback, it’s a kind of fruit cake that has a muslin-wrapped treat baked inside the cake, and it is said that it can foretell the eater’s future. Such as id a ring is found, it means that the person will soon be wed; if a piece of straw is found it means that they will prosper the next year. Now in Austria some people will leave bread, water and a lit lamp on a table before going to bed. It was believed that these would welcome the dead souls back to earth on a night that Austrians consider to be magical. Over in Belgium they believe that it is unlucky for a black cat to cross one’s path and also unlucky if it enters a home. One of their traditions is on...