Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Halloween is gone again….....
Quote for the day: Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night. Steve Almond
Halloween is gone again…..............
I love Halloween. I have friends who think that it is a celebration of Satanic things and therefore evil; I have friends who think that this is fun; I have friends who just don’t want to deal with it (I think that they are scaredy cats!!) and then there are those of us who spend lots of time thinking up elaborate costumes, how to decorate our yard to look scarey and all of that.
I was reading an article in either a newspaper or online and found out that Europeans as well as Venezuelan President Chavez are having a hard time with our Halloween traditions. Europeans are calling it a “bad American habit” and an “unneccessary bad American custom” and President Chavez states that it is emblematic of U.S. culture; “terrorism”.
Whoa…...... hate to educate these folks, but Halloween did not start in America. In fact, Halloween had it’s beginnings in Europe; primarily the Celtics, the Romans, the Catholics, the Irish and the English. A quick visit to the history channel website History Channel gave me quite a bit of information about the how and why our Halloween celebration came to be.
America is a melting pot and the American Halloween is a blend of many different countries and different religious beliefs that the immigrants who came here melted into what is currently known as Halloween.
Now, different parts of the country celebrate it differently too. In the Great Lakes Region where I used to live we had Devil’s Night on October 30th; this was the night to pull harmless pranks on your friends. Oct. 31st was Halloween so we donned our costumes and went out trick-or-treating. On Long Island where I live now, they had no clue as to what I was talking about when I mentioned Devil’s Night; here Halloween and Devil’s Night are combined. You can be a teen and be out with your friends just trick-or-treating and suddenly be bombarded with flour, eggs, and or shaving cream. This seems like real thugish behavior and I am glad that we didn’t move here till the girls were just about done with wanting to dress up and go door to door.
So, how do you celebrate Halloween where you live? Do they know what Devil’s Night is in your neck of the woods or do they blend the two nights together as they do in my current location?
My brain is still working on that terrorism angle - that really has me puzzled.
We passed out our candy and put out our carved pumpkins and sat outside watching all the costumed kids come up to say ‘Trick or Treat’. We had great weather and as soon as it was pitch black outside, at least in our neighborhood, Halloween was done.
Here are the pictures of our pumpkins.
Try and guess which one is my design and which one is hubby’s.
Till next time Dear Reader.
