The Halloween Spirit!

So I decided to do a little history lesson for myself about what Halloween is so I turned to the highly regarded site, Wikipedia-- Halloween is an annual holiday observed on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration.

Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and watching horror films.

Many Christians ascribe no negative significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular holiday devoted to celebrating "imaginary spooks" and handing out candy. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage. In the Roman Catholic Church Halloween is viewed as having a Christian connection, and Halloween celebrations are common in Catholic parochial schools throughout North America and in Ireland.

Other Christians feel concerned about Halloween, and reject the holiday because they feel it trivializes - or celebrates - paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs. A response among some fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches in recent years has been the use of 'Hell houses', themed pamphlets, or comic-style tracts such as those created by Jack T. Chick in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for evangelism. Some consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith because of its origin as a pagan "Festival of the Dead". For example, Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween because they believe anything that originated from a pagan holiday should not be celebrated by true Christians.

Celtic Pagans consider the season a holy time of year. Celtic Reconstructionists, and others who maintain ancestral customs, make offerings to the gods and the ancestors. Some Wiccans feel that the tradition is offensive to Wiccan practitioners for promoting stereotypical caricatures of "wicked witches".

Growing up I enjoyed going out trick-or-treating and dressing up in fun costumes--yes even dressing up as an adult. Growing up I was blessed to have many memories of Halloween! One of my favorite stories was when my "highly regarded" uncle and his wife dressed up in Ape costumes and went climbing on the cars parked out on the street while the area Catholic Church's evening mass was letting out.

I also remember my Nana and Poppy dressing up as Olive Oyl and Popeye! I have to say that there are times like this where I wish I had a picture or two of some of these great costumes. I also remember when my Poppy dressed up as a Chimney--now I don't remember when this took place but I know I was still very young because he took me to 2 of our neighbors houses and he couldn't get through the doors.

Now I swear I have had every costume known to man! For some of the people that I grew up with or older--remember those plastic costumes that came in the box?!?!?! At the time you would go into K-Mart, because that is the ONLY store we had around here, and search what seems like hours for the "perfect" costume. Now thay weren't the most comfortable costumes or the most sturdy. That stupid rubber band on the mask would get wrapped in my hair and by the end of the night it would take "FOREVER" to get it out!

I also remember that the small mouth and nose holes where you were supposed to be able to breath from would make your face all sweaty because they were NEVER big enough for your mouth or nose. However, over the years I think I was also a "rocker", a ghost, a devil, a madame, a prisoner and a clown--I am sure that there was more, but I can only think of some of the obvious costumes.

I should say that the picture off to the left was being contemplated as to whether or not I should post, but this blog is meant for me to rip away all my walls and reveal the true ME (both in thought and personality)! I don't think I was ever allowed to wear my costume out for halloween-- maybe that had something to do with living in the Northeast where 9 times out of 10 you would wear a snowcoat under your halloween costume.

Now I have to say that my all time FAVORITE halloween memory is the photo posted below. Now I should apologies to my Nana for posting this, but I have to say that this is probably the BEST halloween memory I have of her and my Poppy.

(Poppy, me and Nana)