It's Halloween!!!!!!

Hey everyone, It's Halloween! :) and this is my choice of pumpkin design this year. 'The Headless Horseman Rides Again!' :) pretty awesome, hey? I love Halloween its my fav day. I know there are many reasons behind this and it links to the traditions and history of the actually event and day. To go and look them up in books or the internet though gives mix results. So to link with my love for Halloween, I thought I'd write this post about what it means to me and include some of the stuff I know.
On Halloween night at Midnight it's believed that the veils between this world and the spirit world reach there thinnest. This means that lots of spirits can pass between the two different plains some good and bad. So ghost activity is said to be at its highest during this time. So the traditions of pumpkins? In Britain it use to be other squash vegetables and then pumpkins came over from the USA and they were easier to carve. The idea behind carving and making a scare face is actually to ward off the bad spirits from entering your house. You place the pumpkin outside or in a front window in order to do this. The pumpkin is then light up by a candle and it is this light that attracts family and friends who have passed on back to visit you. Of course now a days, people don't just carve scary faces, the idea of carving different things has taken off in a big way specially in the States, where they do go all out for Halloween, much more then we do in Britain! Though you still find that many pumpkins get carved with subjects that link to Halloween.

This is the second pumpkin I carved - Grim Fright Night It's a grim reaper in a graveyard. Oh, it's midnight! Let's see if anything creepy happens! So why is a carved pumpkin called a Jack O' Lantern? This cames from an Irish legend about a man called Jack, who couldn't get into Heaven or Hell, so instead he had to walk around with just a lantern till judgment day arrives.
Okay, next is the dressing up part, people started to believe that by wearing masks and dressing up they could pertained to be spirit whilst going about their business at night, thus no harm would come to them. The idea of Trick or Treating came about because of another event which was celebrate close to Halloween and that was Souling. Where people went around asking for soul cakes and in return they would pray for the departed relatives. This is also connected with Mischief Night, which has kinda merged with Halloween now. Boys would go out and cause Mischief, but they would also knock on door and ask for treats in order to behave, so that's where the whole Trick Or Treat thing has come from possibly.

Me and my 3 best friends dressed up.

One of the games that is traditional played is Apple Bobbing. Apples are placed into a large bowl filled with water and just using your teeth you have to grab an apple. It is said that this came about because of the Roman tradition of celebrating one of their Gods who was connected to apples about this time. In fact it seems lots of religions and countries celebrated simlaire events about the same time, most of these had to do with remembering the dead like the Roman Catholic All Saints' Day and All Souls day, (Which got the name of All Hallow's Eve which then become Hallow'een) Mexico and their Day Of The Dead. There has also been links to Celt and Pagan festivals. So yeah, Halloween has no clear beginnings.

So that's something of a history then. :) I always stay up past midnight on Halloween, just because its something I have always been drawn to do. It's like I'm waiting to see if any ghost come for a visit. Nothing has happened so far, though I got sticky stuff on my keyboard thanks to a midnight snack attack! Anyways that's all for tonight and I'll be back tomorrow.