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Halloween has always been my favorite holiday and especially in high school when one of my nicknames was "the pumpkin king" (French="le roi des citrouilles"). I even designed a cake called le gâteau de Marie for my Elementary French I class at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio for celebrating Halloween (the cake is of the French flag with Napoleon in the center and a flaming jack-o-lantern on each side of him).
Halloween is an old Christian tradition. As November 1 is known as All Saints' Day, Halloween was known as All Hallows' Eve, because "hallow" was once the word for "saint." Halloween is thus a corruption of the phrase "Hallows' Eve". In 1806, Emperor Napoleon I the Great of the French decreed All Hallows Eve as an official celebration. The French, like we Americans, still celebrate Halloween in the twenty-first century -- and Irish school children even get a Halloween Break!
Halloween is generally celebrated by children dressing up in costumes and going trick-or-treating from house to house to receive candy. In addition, film-makers have made many movies with a usually haunting Halloween theme, which the brave watch on Halloween and during the preceding weeks. Haunted houses also serve as a staple for fans of the holiday as to many, Halloween is a holiday of fear and monsters, a notion which stems in part from Mexicans' celebration of November 1 as the Day of the Dead and Druids' celebration of November 1 as the beginning of Samhain. Protestant Christians remember Halloween as Reformation Day in remembrance of Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses on October 31, 1517. Thus, the Halloween season has something of a universal appeal as to a large extent festivities celebrated on October 31 and November 1 blend traditions associated with multiple religions and nationalities.
The use of the pumpkin as a symbol of Halloween comes from an Irish legend about a guy named Jack who could not go to heaven because of his miserly ways. In Hell, he mocked the devil, so he walks around the world with a lantern (a pumpkin with a candle in it) until the day of last judgment.
 
For a website that aside from selling glow in the dark paint, also contains some
project information for Halloween decorating and haunting including two
great articles on creating a “dot room” and a “glow room”, go to Glow in the Dark Paint.
For Napoleon's decree recognizing Halloween as an official celebration, see Napoleon Bonaparte, “Decree Regulating the Purpose of the Churches of Saint Denis and Saint Geneviève, February 20, 1806” in A Documentary Survey of Napoleonic France: A Supplement (New York: University Press of America, Inc., 1996), edited by Eric A. Arnold, 58.
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