GOOD DAY….WORKING FULL OUT ON MY DECORATIONS NOW, ESPECIALLY SINCE A FRIEND HAS TO HAVE ME HELP HER WITH ERRANDS (car issues on her part) ALL DAY TOMMORROW????!!!!!!! So am hustling today.
#OUTLANDER MOMENT
where Jamie goes all dangerous on us: JAMIE TO CAPT. RANDALL: “AND I’ll thank you to take your hands off my wife.”
I thought it might be fun to look at Halloween traditions that we have today and see if we can find out where they come from.
COSTUMES: Evolving from the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain, modern Halloween has become less about literal ghosts and ghouls and more about costumes and candy. The Celts used the day to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, and also believed that this transition between the seasons was a bridge to the world of the dead. Over the millennia the holiday transitioned from a somber pagan ritual to a day of merriment, costumes, parades and sweet treats for children and adults. http://www.history.com/topics/Halloween
Celtic festival of Samhain…ancient, pre-Christian origins and was celebrated on 31 October–1 November in various Celtic nations. It was seen as a… time, when the spirits or fairies (the Aos Sí), and the souls of the dead, could more easily come into our world. After the Christianization of Ireland in the 5th century, some of these customs may have been retained in the Christian observance of All Hallows’ Evel… Samhain, blending the traditions…with Christian ones. From at least the 16th century, the festival included mumming and guising, which involved people going house-to-house in costume… reciting verses or songs in exchange for food… In 19th century Scotland, youths went house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod…Elsewhere in Europe, mumming and costumes were part of other yearly festivals…., in the Celtic regions they were “.. appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers”…the costumes were a means of imitating, or disguising oneself from, the Aos Sí. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_costume
CARVING PUMPKINS: A jack-o’-lantern is a carved pumpkin, or turnip, associated chiefly with the holiday of Halloween, and was named after the phenomenon of strange light flickering over peat bogs, called will-o’-the-wisp or jack-o’-lantern.
According to historian Ronald Hutton, in the 19th century, Hallowe’en guisers in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands commonly used jack-o’-lanterns made from turnips and mangelwurzels,,,. Hutton says that they were also used at Hallowe’en in Somerset during the 19th century. Christopher Hill also writes that “jack-o’-lanterns were carved out of turnips or squashes and were literally used as lanterns to guide guisers on All Hallows’ Eve.” Some claim that the Jack-o’-lanterns originated with All Saints’ Day and represented Christian souls in purgatory ] Bettina Arnold writes that they were sometimes set on windowsills to keep the harmful spirits out of one’s home….despite the commonly held belief that the carving of the Jack-O’-Lantern was an ancient Irish custom, no scholarly research into Irish mythology and customs includes a contemporary reference to such a practice ….There is however evidence that turnips were used to carve what was called a “Hoberdy’s Lantern” in Worcestershire, England at the end of the 18th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack-o’-lantern
BOBBING FOR APPLES: British author W. H. Davenport Adams, who saw connections between a popular belief in the prognosticative power of apples and what he called “old Celtic fairy lore,”…described the bobbing game as it existed around the turn of the 20th century in his 1902 book, Curiosities of Superstition:
[The apples] are thrown into a tub of water, and you endeavour to catch one in your mouth as they bob round and round in provoking fashion. When you have caught one, you peel it carefully, and pass the long strip of peel thrice, sunwise , round your head; after which you throw it over your shoulder, and it falls to the ground in the shape of the initial letter of your true love’s name http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/halloween/a/Bobbing-For-Apples-On-Halloween.htm
LOOKING AT THESE HALLOWEEN COLLECTIBLES (CHECK OUT THE STORE ABOVE TOO) I BET YOU WISH YOU’D SAVED A FEW THINGS:
OTHER TRADITIONS INCLUDE:
1. BLACK CATS: Believed to be a familiar of witches
2. SPIDERS: If a spider falls into a lamp and is consumed it is believed that a witch is near by
3. BATS: Also a familiar of witches and an omen of death.
4. CAULDRONS: Long established in Celtic tradition as where all souls go at death.
5. BROOMS: Often used by the poor helpless women burned as witches, as a walking stick as they could not afford to ride.
“Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
William Shakespeare
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