Halloween is finally here and each year on this night millions of children dress up in costume and take to the streets for a spooky dose of trick or treat fun.
The Children’s Safety Zone is a great site with Many Halloween Safety Tips for Trick-or-Treaters, Parents and Homeowners. Make sure you check it out Before taking/letting your children go/out Trick-or-Treating tonight!
Halloween Safety Tips
Halloween is an annual celebration, the word Halloween has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from All Hallows Eve which is the day/night before All Hollows Day or All Saints Day. It is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints.
But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.
The people that were still alive did not want to be possessed so on the night of October 31 the villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.
The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840’s by Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
And the history of the Jack-o-Lantern? Well it probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, there was a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster and to make a long story short! He had tricked the devil so instead of allowing old Jack into Hell the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer!
The Irish originally used turnips as their “Jack’s lanterns”. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember!
Some cults have adopted Halloween as their favorite holiday, but the day did not grow out of evil practices but the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans.
History and Customs of Halloween
Want to know more about Halloween and everything that goes with it? History.com also has a great site about the History of Halloween, Holiday Origins, Halloween Videos, Famous Haunts, Ghost Stories, Around the World and so much more.
And last but not least! What’s Halloween without a few Halloween Costume Pictures? In my opinion these are about the best that I have ever seen and I personally think they all should win a prize for “Best Costume”, goodness knows I’d give them a blue ribbon!
Great Halloween Costumes!
Well, that’s it for me this Very Scary and Spooky Halloween, I need to go and get dressed up in my costume, noisily parade around the ‘hood’ and be as destructive as possible so I can frighten away the spirits that are looking for bodies to possess!
I hope that all of you have a safe and great Halloween and don’t let the ghouls and goblins get ya…BOOOOOOOO!!!!! And assuming that they don’t, then I hope to see you all back again tomorrow for some more…
