This post has come back from the past! Literally. An older one I got back to haunt my blog today and fill up the spaces! Plus, it is all about cool Halloween facts I am sure you will enjoy!
In 2017, around this time of the year, my now college-freshman daughter came to me to get my feedback on a poem she is writing for her Language Arts class at school – using Maya Angelou’s ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten me at all’ (and I discovered a wonderful poem and Maya Angelou’s recitation of that poem as a result). As we read my daughter’s poems, she commented that she had not realized earlier how scary Mother Goose poems sound (for example, Rock-a-Bye Baby). To read some of these scary poems, you can check out this link here and Literati Pulps’s scary poems to read for Halloween.
From Mother Goose’s scary poems and the Grimms Brothers Fairy Tales to clowns scaring people across cities in the world today and the various true stranger danger news everyday, we have come a long way. With all the scary clowns, clown costumes and masks are were banned in my kids’ schools along with a few other type of costumes. So I had a pretty clown-free trick-or-treating that year as I walked with my kids around our neighborhoods am looking forward to trick-or-treating with my kids with the added assurance that we will not be running into scary clowns (hopefully) in our neighborhoods!! But there is more to Halloween than trick-or-treating and here are 13 ghoul-picked weird facts for you..
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13 Interesting Facts About Spooky Creepy Halloween Handpicked For You
1. Halloween’s origins are in the Celtic pagan festival of Samhain celebrated over 2000 years ago.
2. Halloween is short for Hallow’s Eve (the day before All Hallows Day/Holy Day) on November 1st
3. Some people have samhainophobia (fear of Halloween)…
4. Trick-or-treating owes its beginnings to the practice called mumming or guising. In mumming, people dressed up and went door-to-door singing songs and dancing in exchange for food
5. Mumming and guising might have had their origins in another custom called ‘souling’. Here, people (mostly poor children) went door to door, offering prayers for the departed in exchange for soul cakes.
6. Jack-o-lanterns were originally made of turnips. Pumpkins are a much later addition
7. The name Jack-o-lantern also has an interesting history. According to Irish folklore, Jack tricked the devil one too many times. The result: no entry into heaven for him. But Jack had already made a bargain with the devil that Satan cannot claim his soul. So he ends up in the in-between, making himself a lantern with a piece of coal the devil threw at him. And he has been roaming ever since.
8. Apple-bobbing or dunking as a Halloween game started in Ireland and England in the 17th – 20th centuries.
9. Chocolate candies top the list of popular Halloween candies. An article from my original post (in 2017) and a more recent one both have Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at #1 on the list.
10. Halloween is the second most commercially successful festival in the US. Yes, it is not Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, after Christmas. The sheer amount of candy and then the costumes and Halloween parties – all add up!!
11. Some of the other similar customs that are celebrated around the world include Day of the Dead in Mexico, Dziady in Poland, Ghost Festival in China, and Calan Gaeaf in Wales.
12. The movie Halloween re-purposed William Shatner’s Star Trek’s mask, as they were on a shoestring budget, and that was the cheapest mask they could find.
13. World War II caused sugar rationing, which impacted trick-or-treating for a few years.
Related Reads and More
As for myself, my favorite Halloween candies are
- Almond Joy followed by that most popular one
- Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups(loving this variety pack), and then
- Snickers
- then the rest..
Previous Halloweeny reads on my blog include
- 10 Great Halloween Movies Based on Books to Watch Together
- Halloween Reads for All Ages
- 13 Haunted Places and Such to See in California
- 10 Halloween Reads Old and New for Young and Old
- 13 Spooky Halloween Reads for Kids and Adults
- 13 Cool Things About Poe: Poe-Pular Books and More
And Now, the End of This Post
Do you have any interesting facts or stories to share about Halloween? Do let me know.
Goes towards Thursday 13 and the UBC
