Helloween and Chinese Ghost Festival

Similarities:
1. Peolple will pay worship 崇拜 & respect to the ancestors 祖先/ dead people
2. A common / popular festival among the people, most people will participate 參與
3. Certain rituals 儀式 will be perform, and was follow years after years
4. Both two festival states that ghost can walk the earth again during the festival, especially in the Chinese Ghost Festival that said the opening of the gates of Hell, permitting all ghosts to receive food and drink from the living people.

Differences:
1. Halloween is now a pop culture 流行文化 in Western, more young people will participate in, while Chinese Ghost Festival is a more traditional 傳統的 festival, older people tends to participate more
2. There are different celebrations 慶祝 in the festival. For Halloween, there will be Trick-or-treating, Bobbing for apples, Costume 化妝 parties, Carving jack-o-lanterns 南瓜燈. For Chinese Ghost Festival, people will do ancestor worship 拜祖先, offering food, burning joss paper 燒元寶, chanting of scriptures 唱大戲.
3. Halloween is a festival celebrate in the West, while Chinese Ghost festival can only be found in where Chinese lived, it is a Asian Festival.


INTRODUCTIONS:

YUE LAAN 盂蘭(HUNGRY GHOST) FESTIVAL

Date: Seventh Moon, Day 15

For one long lunar month during the Hungry Ghost Festival, ghosts are said to roam the earth.
In some areas of Hong Kong, visitors can see small roadside fires, where believers burn paper money and other offerings to appease the restless spirits.
Local festivals feature Chinese opera. Popular venues are King George V Memorial Park in Kowloon and Moreton Terrace Playground in Causeway Bay.

(from HK Tourism Board) http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/heritage/festivals/he_fest_hung.jhtml

The Ghost Festival is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday, which is celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 14th night of the seventh lunar month.

In the Chinese tradition, the seventh month in the Chinese calendar is called the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits come out from the lower world to visit earth. The Ghost Festival is the climax of a series of the Ghost Month celebrations. Activities at the festival include preparing ritualistic offering food, and burning hell money to please the visiting ghosts and spirits, as well as deities and ancestors. Other activities include, burying and releasing miniature paper boats and lanterns on water, which signifies giving directions to the lost ghosts. A very solemn festival, the festival nevertheless represents a connection between the living and the dead, earth and heaven, as well as body and soul.

(from Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Festival

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HALLOWEEN (from Wikipedia)

Date: October 31

Halloween is a tradition celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets. It is celebrated in parts of the Western world, though most common in Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, Ireland, and with increasing popularity in Australia, and other immigrants brought versions of the traditions to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.

The term Halloween, is shortened from All-hallow-even, it was also sometimes called All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions,

Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when the spiritual world can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

The date is different.

For chinese ghost festival, people will have to pray for their ancestors, burn to deliver the banknotes from ghost bank for those staff at the gate for the death. Fried bean curd, chinese wine will be offered in the street. Children will have to sleep as soon as possible.
More, people believe that they should arrange the Chinese Opera to entertain the ghost.

For Halloween, people will play around to have joy and excitement with black and orange customes. Pumpkin is the most popular item for halloween. The children can throw the chocolates at the ghost or monsters.

The similarities are ghost would scare people at nightime, we'll be in memorial of the dead bodies.
Please elaborate by yourself.