Hallowe’entide – Season of Ghosts and Witches
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Posted by Jill Stefko Oct 3, 2009 |
Hallowe’en is the second most decorated holiday after Christmas. Orange Christmas lights adorn bushes, trees and porches. Figures and pictures of ghosts, witches, black cats, Jack-O Lanterns scarecrows and other Hallowe’en symbols are displayed. Bobbing for apples is a popular party game. Ghost stories both fact and fiction, are told by the fireside. Hot dogs, candied apples, apple cider, candy corn and marshmallow Peeps®, produced by Just Born candy factory in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, in the forms of ghosts, Jack-O-Lanterns and brown chocolate flavored cats are consumed.
Children go Trick or Treating for candy and other goodies. In the early part of the 1900s, Hallowe’en was mischief night. Children and teens would pull pranks including knocking on doors and quickly run away and wrap paper around any convenient object. Spooks were blamed for the mischievous activity. Hallowe’en customs are rooted in the Pagan traditions of Samhain, an ancient Fire or Solar Festival. It was the night that the veil between the living and the dead was the thinnest. The dead roamed the country side and the living begged for alms in the forms of soul cakes and fruit. Celts dressed in animal pelts so the dead wouldn’t recognize them. Jack-o-Lantern walked the earth, having been denied entrance to Heaven and Hell. People gave thanks for the third and final harvest’s bounty. Negativity and other things not wanted were banished in the flames of a fire. Pomegranate seeds were eaten. Celebrants savored the pungent sweetness of the fruit. Altars were covered with orange and black cloths, the colors of Hallowe’en. Autumn flowers, such as chrysanthemums and asters, pumpkins, Indian corn, gourds, acorns, cornucopias and oat, wheat and barley sheaves.
I researched both and enjoyed writing:
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