Hey folks!
Man, I love Halloween! And here in Whyville it's even better than usual, because we can dress up like anything we can manage to draw! So far this Halloween I've seen a wall of eyeballs, cats and bugs and other beasties, and all sorts of classic and not-so classic Halloween monsters. I can't wait for the party on Saturday!
With all the cool holiday stuff happening in Whyville, I thought I'd do some research to see where our Halloween traditions come from. One of the most interesting things I found was the history of Trick or Treating!
Halloween finds its roots in a mixture of Druid and Catholic celebrations which both occured on or around October 31. This Catholic holiday was originally known as All Soul's Day (and some folks still celebrate this).
Many hundreds of years ago, the British observed All Soul's Day by, among other things, giving out special treats called "soulcakes" to the very poor, who went begging door to door. It wasn't called Trick-or-Treating back then, because the poor wouldn't pull a trick on people who didn't give them a treat. Instead, people called it "going a-souling", and, in exchange for the soulcakes, the poor promised to say a prayer for the dead.
The traditional soulcakes evolved into apples, buns, and money, and children took over the role of the beggars. Later, as the American frontier began to be explored and taken over by the pioneers, Halloween changed further. People began to give candy to children in order to avoid their sneaky tricks, thus leading to the now-famous cry of "Trick or Treat!"
Thanks to the Holidays website for providing a lot of my info!
From the spookiness of Bigfoot's history books, this is Bigfoot Bill,
wishing you a creepy, crawly, and crazy Halloween!
by Sparkles
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| Guest Writer |
THE HISTORY OF THE JACK-O-LANTERN
As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was known as a joker and a
trickster, tricked the devil into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image
of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree.
Jack made a deal with the devil that if he would never tempt him again he
would promise to let him down the
tree. But when Jackie died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his
evil ways, and he was also denied from the devil's kingdom because he had
tricked the devil.
Instead of heaven or hell, the devil gave Jack a single ember to light his
way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hallowed-out
turnip to keep it glowing longer.
The Irish originally used turnips instead of pumpkins.
Americans found pumpkins much more plentiful than turnips. And
that's why we light a pumpkin every Halloween!
