Halloween Fun
I know, I know….Halloween was LAST week. But it’s really just ended for me…on account of it taking a whole 7 days to finish all the candy I got! I don’t know what it was, but for some reason I was more into the “Spooky Spirit” this year than the past two or three combined!
It all began in Public Speaking class when my teacher assigned a Demonstration Speech the week before Halloween. I was searching and searching for the perfect topic. How to: bake a cake. No….too common and I’m a horrible baker. How to: dress for an interview. Boooor-ing. How to: change the oil in a car. I would have no idea where to begin. And then BAM, I got it! How to: carve a Jack O’Lantern. Fun for all ages and certainly fitting with the season.
So, as I dove in to the research stage of this speech, I started to get more and more interested about the background of Halloween. I found out some pretty neat things! To make a long story short: Halloween dates back to the Celtic festival Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest and beginning of a new year. However, the Pope later changed November 1st to All Saint’s or All Hallow’s Day because he didn’t approve of the pagan holiday. That makes October 31st All Hallow’s Eve which is where we get the term Halloween!
Now that’s not all I discovered. I also found out Jack O’Lantern comes from Irish folk tales of a farmer named Stingy Jack who, according to the legends, made a series of deals with the devil. When he wasn’t let into either heaven or hell, he complained he wouldn’t be able to see while he roamed the earth. So, the devil tossed him a burning ember which he put into a carved out turnip, making a lantern. (The idea of carving pumpkins didn’t come about until later, since the fruit…yes, fruit…is native to the Americas.)
Pretty interesting, eh? Next year, you can amaze your friends with these few Fun Facts about Halloween. Anyway, preparing for the speech definitely got me into the Halloween mood. Next, it was time to find just the right costume to wear to the Halloween party my friends were having. After much shared frustration, two of my friends and I still had no costume ideas, so we thought, “What if we did something together?” And BAM again, a light bulb went off in Rachel’s head (after seeing a box of s’more pop-tarts I might add) that we should all be an ingredient of a s’more. She was the marshmallow, I was the Hershey bar, and Cassidy was the graham cracker. It worked out perfectly and we were a big hit!
The night of the Halloween party was a blast. We carved a few pumpkins, decorated my friend’s house, ate lots of food, played games, and just relaxed! Now, I’m finally Halloweened out and ready to move on to Thanksgiving! Turkey Day….here I come!
