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Originally, you had to dance for your “treat.”
Most experts trace trick-or-treating to the
European practice of "mumming,"
or "guysing" in which costume-wearing
participants would go door-to-door
performing choreographed dances, songs and
plays in exchange for treats. According to
Elizabeth Pleck’s "Celebrating
The Family" the tradition cropped up in
America, where it would often take place on
Thanksgiving.
•
Halloween is more Irish than St. Patrick’s Day.
Halloween’s origins come from a Celtic
festival for the dead called "Samhain"
Celts believed the ghosts of the dead roamed
Earth on this holiday, so people would dress
in costumes and leave “treats” out on their
front doors to appease the roaming spirits.
Granted, the Celts were not solely based in
Ireland when these customs started taking
shape around the fist
century B.C., but as will be talked about more
in a later section, the Irish Celts were the
ones who invented the jack-o'-lantern.
This Halloween prototype was eventually
disrupted and adapted by Christian
missionaries into celebrations closer to what
we celebrate today, including partly by the
not-Irish
St. Patrick, whose work was later mostly
recognized by Americans.
• If
you’d been around for the earliest Halloween
celebrations, you might have worn animal skins
and heads.
According to ancient Roman records, tribes
located in today’s Germany and France traditionally
wore costumes of animal heads and skins to
connect to spirits of the dead. This tradition
continued into modern day celebrations of
Samhain, the Celtic holiday that inspired
Halloween in America. On this day,
merry-makers often dressed as evil spirits
simply by blackening their faces. The leader
of the Samhain parades wore a white sheet and
carried a wooden horse head or a decorated
horse skull (a
modern Welsh version of this costume is shown
above). Young people also celebrated by
cross-dressing.
• Jack-o’-lanterns were once
made out of turnips, beets and potatoes — not
pumpkins.
The jack-o'-lantern
comes from an old Irish tale
about a man named Stingy Jack. According to
folklore, Stingy Jack was out getting sloshed with
the Devil when Jack convinced his drinking partner
to turn himself into a coin to pay for the drinks
without spending money. Jack then put the Devil,
shaped like a coin, into his pocket, which also
contained a silver cross that kept the Devil from
transforming back. Jack promised to free the Devil
as long as the Devil wouldn’t bother him for a year,
and if he died, the Devil could never claim his
soul. Jack tricked the Devil again later, getting
him to pick a piece of fruit out of a tree and then
carving a cross into the bark when the Devil was in
the branches. This trick bought Jack another 10
years of devil-free living.
When Jack finally died, God decided he wasn’t fit
for heaven, but the Devil had promised never to
claim his soul for hell. So Jack was sent off to
roam Earth with only a burning coal for light. He
put the coal into a turnip as a lantern, and
Stingy Jack became Jack
of the Lantern or “Jack o’ Lantern.” Based
on this myth, the Irish carved scary faces into
turnips, beets and potatoes to scare away Stingy
Jack or any other spirits of the night.
•
Halloween used to be a great day to find
your soulmate.
In some parts of Ireland, people celebrated
Halloween by playing romantic
fortune-telling games, according to Nicholas
Rogers' "Halloween: From Pagan Ritual To
Party Night." These games allegedly
predicted who they’d marry, and when. Since
Halloween, like Valentine’s Day, was one of
the main celebrations of the year where
young people could mingle with the opposite
sex, it was also considered a good day to
scope out a sweetheart. In America, young
people, particularly girls, continued the
old Irish tradition. Games, like bobbing for
apples, tried to predict future romances,
according to the "Oxford
Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America”.
•
MORE TO COME.....
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If
you're looking for something easy and quick, you'll love this
recipe. With only two ingredients, you can't go wrong. Don't
skimp on the barbaque sauce. Look for a good brand, pick one
of your favorites. A cheap brand will not turn out as well.
Recipe Ingredients
•1 can of peanuts
•Up to 1/2 cup of BBQ sauce
Combine the peanuts and
barbaque sauce until the peanuts are entirely coated (not
too heavy.) Spread them out on a foil-lined cookie sheet.
Bake at 300° for about ten minutes. Times will vary
depending on how thickly coated the peanuts are. Check
frequently and remove from the oven when the peanuts appear
to be covered with dried blood.
Let sit until completely cooled. Transfer to a serving bowl.
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