Saturday morning is here. Wearing a jacket I hope as it is a little chilly outside. We finally lit the pilot light on the stove yesterday and it felt good to take the chill off the room when I got up. I will enjoy every minute of this wonderful fall weather while I can. For as time passes so quickly I am sure it will be winter cold before we know it.
Halloween is almost here. I tried yesterday to imagine it being in the summer. Say in August. I think it wouldn't be a real Halloween if it was hot and you ate watermelon instead of cider and cookies. I wonder who thought up all the holidays and picked when they should be. Surely I'm not the only one who sits around and wonders about all this stuff. I drive myself crazy sometimes, excuse me crazier, worrying how all this came to be. I googled it. God Bless Mr. Google. He is so sweet to answer all my questions.
As we get older as adults we usually don't get as excited over Halloween as we did as kids. But it was different back when I was a kid, growing up on Ninth Street. Mother never had the money to even buy s mask, let alone a costume. Halloween was a big deal though. I would go through Mothers old clothes and paint my face bright with lipstick. Usually there would be a bunch of us neighborhood kids go together. No parents usually trekked along back then. They gave their kids a paper bag, sent them out into the neighborhood and said "Don't be gone too long." Nobody had any idea some crazy would give us tainted candy or razor blades in a apple. No-one at least not in our neighborhood had money for costumes or big parties. It was innocent fun, in an innocent time.
I remember one year when I was about six I went with my brother,"Smiling Bud" and some of his friends Trick or Treating." I dressed up in one of Mom's dresses. Of course it drug the ground. I was clumsy anyway and with the dress under my feet I fell half the night. But oh I was so excited going with Bud and the other bigger kids. All of them about eight. A very big deal to me.
We made our way up Ninth, hitting all the neighbors, filling our bags. I was so excited, my candy bag was getting heavier and heavier. We stopped at Ninth and Virgina. There was a fence around the yard. The house didn't look very well lit up. Everyone looked at each other but decided to go in and up to the door. We all entered and made our way to the porch. Just as we started up the door opened and a big dog flew out. Growling and barking. Believe me when I say the crowd went crazy. Everyone screamed, everyone ran for the gate. I in my long dress stumbled and fell. Jumping to my feet I grabbed my dress up, threw my bag of candy at the dog and made for freedom. Needless to say all the others were safely several feet away. I promptly went home, without candy and told Mom how Bud left me alone to the Dog.
I remembered that act of tattling years later. One Halloween when we lived in Leavenworth when Billie was about six, Al and I took her Trick or treating. We went to the better part of town. So she would get really good treats. I got out of the car with Billie and we would walk from house to house. Her Dad driving along slowly at the street. The houses were big, fancy. We went to one that set back a ways. I had her by the hand and we climbed the stairs and was about halfway up the walk when this whooshing sound happened. I looked up just in time to see this white figure come swooping down out of the tree, right towards us. I knew then what my brother and his friends knew back years ago. Sometimes its every man for themselves. I am so ashamed to say I started screaming and running for the car, forgetting I had a stunned six year old watching this ghost come from the tree. She watched alone because her Mother was already down the steps.
The people had a sheet fixed on a wire from the tree to the house. When you got to a certain spot, it activated the ghost. I am not proud of my actions. And its a wonder Billie likes Halloween at all. I am not sure she remembers this fiasco. I probably should have kept this memory to myself.
I am chilly. So I will wander from the one lonely blinking light of Blogland and make my way home.. My coffee awaits me. The words I have scattered here this morning is more like babbling. I have second thoughts about confessing my cowardly act. The song runs through my head,"Hang down your Head Tom Dooley, hang down your head in shame." I'm outta here.
Where and when did Halloween customs originate?
The many customs we have today in relation to Halloween have their origins in the religious practices of the Romans and the Druids, therefore dating back many centuries. The Romans worshiped various gods and on October 31, a special feast was held in honor of Pomona, goddess of the fruit trees. Later, the Druids, an ancient order of Celtic priests in Britain, made this feast an even more extensive celebration by also honoring Samhain, lord of the dead. This was normally done on November 1 and it was therefore decided to conveniently honor both Pomona and Samhain on October 31 and November 1.
These Druids believed that on the night before November 1 (October 31) Samhain called together wicked souls or spirits which had been condemned to live in the bodies of animals during the year which had just transpired. Since they were afraid of these spirits, they chose October 31 as a day to sacrifice to their gods, hoping they would protect them. They really believed that on this day they were surrounded by strange spirits, ghosts, witches, fairies, and elves, who came out to hurt them. In addition to this, they also believed that cats were holy animals, as they considered them to represent people who lived formerly, and as punishment for evil deeds were reincarnated as a cat. All this explains why witches, ghosts, and cats are a part of Halloween today.
The custom of trick-or-treating and the use of "jack-o'-lanterns" comes from Ireland. Hundreds of years ago, Irish farmers went from house to house, begging for food, in the name of their ancient gods, to be used at the village Halloween celebration. They would promise good luck to those who gave them good, and made threats to those who refused to give. They simply told the people, "You treat me, or else I will trick you!"
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