Beware Halloween Is Coming

Halloween Pranks and Candy Apples

The traditional colors of Halloween are orange and black and these also come from the pagan celebrations of the autumn and harvest. The orange color symbolizes the color of crops and changing leaves. As for black, it symbolizes the “death” of summer and the changing of the seasons. Other colors have been added to Halloween decorations and they include yellow, purple and green.

Halloween is a time for children and teens to play pranks on others. These include throwing eggs, toilet papering homes and smashing pumpkins. It was the ancient Celts who celebrated Samhain by playing comical pranks, games and lit bonfires. In the 1920s and 1930s, these kinds of celebrations often became rowdy. So to stop this vandalism adults began handing out candy to get the minds of children and teens off of doing bad pranks and thinking instead of trick-or-treats and dressing up in costumes. I think Halloween can be an enjoyable holiday if only no pranks are played.

Wonderful treats on this holiday are candy apples. Today these apples are made either with a red candy coating or with caramel and nuts or some other kinds of Halloween apple treats. This tradition comes from a mix of Celtic and Roman traditions. The Celtic Samhain came around the same time as the Roman festival that honored Pamona, the goddess of fruit trees. She was often symbolized by an apple and so this same fruit became associated with Samhain celebrations during harvest.

Back in the old days, apples were thought to be sacred fruit and could be used to predict the future. This started the tradition of bobbing for apples. If a person could get an apple out of the bucket full of water with their mouth but not using their hands they would be the first to get married. Once they got the apple on the first try it was thought that they would experience true love and the others who kept missing would have problems with their love lives. Another myth was that if a girl put the apple she had bobbed for under her pillow she would dream about her future husband.

Candy treats directly associated with Halloween is candy corn. It was invented in the late 1880s and was in mass production by the early 1990s. They come in orange, yellow and white colors and resemble corn kernels.

Jack O’ Lanterns Come Rolling In

October gives us a full month of colorful autumn and ends with the spooky day of Halloween. There are people who enjoy this holiday especially children and those who think it is a pagan event. Personally, I have always enjoyed Halloween just for the fun of it with nothing other than that. A kind of autumn celebration with carved pumpkins, colorful leaves and the ghosts and ghoulies just for fun. That is how I look at Halloween.

In the U.S. it is common to see carved pumpkins almost everywhere and in some other parts of the world as well. There are also gourd-like orange fruits that get carved with ghoulish faces and illuminated by candles. Actually, the tradition of carving pumpkins comes from an Irish folktale. This tale is about an unusual man whose name is Stingy Jack. It originated in Ireland because long ago large turnips and potatoes were used for carving faces. When Irish immigrants arrived in America they could carve out pumpkins.

The story of Stingy Jack comes from an Irish myth where Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. Since Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink he tried to get the Devil to change himself into a coin which Jack could then use to pay for their drinks. Well, the Devil did change himself into a coin but then Stingy Jack decided to keep the coin and put it into his pocket beside a silver cross. The cross prevented the Devil from changing back to his original form.

Eventually Stingy Jack did let the Devil get free but told him not to bother him for one year and that if during that year he should die then the Devil could not claim his soul. The following year Stingy Jack once again tricked the Devil by getting him to climb a tree and carving a cross into the tree trunk so that the Devil could not get back down. When Stingy Jack let him get down he made him promise not to bother him for another ten years.

Not long afterwards Stingy Jack died and God decided that he didn’t want to let such an unsavory character into heaven. On the other hand, the Devil was still upset about the tricks Stingy Jack had played on him and since he had given his word not to claim Jack’s soul then the Devil didn’t want to let Jack into hell. Instead, the Devil sent Stingy Jack into the dark of night with only a burning coal to light the way. He put this coal into a carved-out turnip and ever since has been roaming the Earth. The Irish started referring to this ghostly character as “Jack of the Lantern” which later simply became Jack O’ Lantern.

In Ireland and Scotland, people started creating their own versions of Stingy Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into potatoes or turnips and placing them in windows or near doors to keep Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits away. In England, people carve out large beets. In America, immigrants were happy to discover that pumpkins make the best Jack O’ Lanterns. So upon a dark Halloween night if you happen to see a glowing light approaching you it would be best to run as fast as you can.

Tale of Vampires

Halloween is on its way and as it nears many people let their imaginations grow. The one thing that has scared many people and delighted horror movie fans is the fear of vampires. I will tell you one thing though if you really think about it you can spot a vampire for miles, you know what one looks like, Hollywood has made them famous and you have been well informed about what to do to protect yourself but a crazy maniac or a serial killer looks pretty much like everyone else and isn’t that a much scarier thought? Anyway, let’s get back to vampires.

The belief in vampires goes back through the centuries and Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Romans and even the Greeks had their beliefs. When the sun went down, when the night came, creatures with sharp fangs, white-faced climbed out of their coffins and went looking for blood. In the English language, the word vampire has been around since 1734 and in 1897 Bram Stoker wrote his classic novel “Dracula”. We all know what happened when Hollywood got a hold of the vampire story. There are many vampire movies but the original will always be the classical one and the movie is “Dracula” starring Bela Lugosi.

Dracula came from Transylvania in Romania simply because that was where Vlad Dracul or Vlad the Devil came from. This actual Dracula had a thirst for blood but he never bit people on the neck. He tortured them to get his blood. It certainly didn’t make him into a vampire but you know how stories tend to get exaggerated. Today we have plenty of vampire movies to choose from and we are ready to fight off vampires. First of all with crosses, with garlic wreaths and most important with faith.

How do we know someone is a vampire? Apparently, he won’t have a mirror reflection and you won’t see him around in the daytime. One of the most interesting vampire theme movies I ever saw was based on the old, popular soap opera “Dark Shadows” and the movie is “House of Dark Shadows”. It showed a vampire Barnabas Collins getting the chance to return to the world of the living again and after such a long time being chained in his coffin, boy was he thirsty. What made this movie interesting was that it reunited actors from the soap opera and second it gave the vampire a chance to become human again. Something I don’t think anybody has ever considered possible. When in the movie things take a bad turn and Barnabas gets betrayed well let’s just say that things go from bad to extremely worse. It is a movie to be watched on Halloween for sure.

So be careful and check out your neighbors. Oh, yes most importantly you do know vampires are not real or are they? He, he, he.....

Halloween Capital of the World

Anoka, Minnesota, calls itself the "Halloween Capital of the World," as it is one of the first cities in the United States to put on a Halloween celebration that discourages people from playing tricks or causing trouble.

A weeklong celebration was started in Anoka in 1920, in an effort to take the trick out of trick-or-treating. Among the highlights is The Grand Day Parade and the Gray Ghost 5K Run. This run was inspired by sightings of Bill Andberg, a marathon runner whose gray-clad ghostly figure could often be seen running through a local cemetery. He kept himself going and died at the age of 96.

All week long there is a pumpkin bake-off and a competition for best Halloween house decorations. Most participants wear their Halloween costumes.

The Monster Mash

An old song but a great one for Halloween. We are almost there and for those who make a big deal about Halloween at least this year, it’s at the end of the week October 31 is on a Sunday.. “The Monster Mash” is a song by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and came out as a single in 1962. There is also the LP The Original Monster Mash with odd monster tunes. The song became a favorite and rose to number one just before Halloween rolled in. It has been popular ever since.