Scarlett

"They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family.

Their house is a museum.
When people come to see 'em
They really are a screa-um.
The Addams Family."

<b> So, what are you doing on Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Fright Night in your part of the world ?
Getting all dressed up? Party?
Turning off the lights and pretending you are not home?

</b>

offwego

Fog machine and scary lights on the porch.

A soundtrack of &quot;scary things rustling in the bushes&quot; that I play from a boom box in the flowers around the house.

My witch costume is ready (I have a new hat this year) as is the super huge cauldron of candy.

It's not every day you get to terrorize the neighborhood kids!

Tulips

Scarlett, you must have picked up some great Halloween costumes on your recent trip to Hell!

Here in Belgium, it mostly passes us by, although the shops are really trying very hard to get us interested.

On the other hand, All Saints day, on November 1st, is a national holiday. If we did have a party for Halloween, at least there's no work the next day (apart from the required visit to put flowers on the cemetary on Nov. 1st).

Statia

They don't do Halloween here in the islands.

indie

Since hubby will be out of town - definitely turning off the lights pretending am not in !!!

Some of the large groups of teenage boys are just too menacing for my comfort - especially given they all tower over my imposing 5.2 self

Fodorite018

On our street, turning off the lights wouldn't be an option...plus our kids might get bent out of shape, lol!

I tried to count the children we have on our street...after 31 kids in 10 houses...I didn't even bother to count the rest of the street! We truly are in &quot;kid central&quot; here...so guess I better go buy more candy. It is our first year here, and I have a feeling that we will see more kids than we did in military family housing, lol!

Geez...I'm scaring MYSELF with all this, lol!

Tallulah

It's weird but we really don't do the Halloween thing over here. Some shops try to make an effort and you can buy rubbish Halloween products, but on the whole it's resticted to the under 7s. And Trick or Treating is certainly looked down on.

degas

Scarlett, I arranged this scary lunar event just for you. Enjoy:

Earthlings are about to be treated to a total lunar eclipse, just in time for Halloween. For more than an hour Wednesday night, the moon will be covered entirely by Earth's shadow and resemble a glowing pumpkin.

dln

mms, your street could be our street! I have yet to decorate. The attempt at decorating with pumpkins failed miserably because the squirrels ATE the pumpkins. And to add insult to injury, they literally carted the carcasses off the porch steps into the garden! So I guess I will have to resort to the ceramic kind this year.

Scarlett, when we were in France earlier this year, I saw a few shops in Paris with Halloween decorations and accessories for sale. I don't why I thought this, but I had the feeling Halloween was strictly an American thing! I guess not?

janeygirl

No plans for me (and no kids in my neighborhood - we never get Trick-or-Treaters) but I always thought a great costume (for those of us who are of a certain age, at least) would be to dress up as the Devil in a Blue Dress (the lyrics tell you exactly what to wear, just add a pair of devil horns):

Devil With A Blue Dress On
Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels

(Shorty Long - Blackwell/Mariscalso)

Fee, fee, fi, fi, fo-fo, fum
Look at Molly now [2: look out once again, now], here she comes
Wearin' her wig hat and shades to match
She's got high-heel shoes and an alligator hat
Wearin' her pearls and her diamond rings
She's got bracelets on her fingers, now, and everything
She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on
Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on
Wearin' her perfume, Chanel No. 5
Got to be the finest girl alive
She walks real cool, catches everybody's eye
She's got such good lovin' that they can't say goodbye
Not too skinny, she's not too fat
She's a real humdinger and I like it like that
She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on
Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on

Kate

Here in England, Halloween is overshadowed by Bonfire Night (AKA Guy Fawkes night) on November 5th - England's longest running annual festival (including Christmas!).

Scarlett

I am always so impressed with those of you who go to the trouble and have such imaginations as to do a really Big Halloween decorating thing to the house!
This is our first Halloween here in this area, but there are a few babies on the block. Will their parents wheel them around in their prams and scare them to death? LOL
Pup will be worried, the bell will ring, he will want to greet them, they will scare him..sigh..he will have to have therapy.
I have been known to be the Girl in the Red Dress, janey
Degas, thank you so much for the Eclipse! I had a note here not to forget, do you know what time? I will lie in the hammock and wait~
dln, we were in Paris over Halloween one year, not much decorating but the shops were full of pumpkin cookies etc. Some young people were wearing Halloween style make-up ..anyway, I figured it was for Halloween
Talluleh,
we tried to prevent out young children from participating in the whole Trick or Treating thing ..as the Yankee thought it was just going around begging for candy. He said he would buy them all the candy they needed.
But we finally gave in to pressure when they were the only ones on the block who did not dress up and go begging .. But the teenagers that go around can definitely be scary

I like the idea of scaring the kiddies , maybe since I have my own Gomez and occasionally have a Lurch about the house and I definitely have to wacky relatives, maybe we will be the Adams Family

dan_woodlief

Janeygirl. That would scare the *%$^ out of me to see someone dressed up like a blue devil, since I am a N.C. Tar Heel fan. We decorated more than usual this year and got some good sound effects to scare the Trick or Treaters, but I will be out most of the evening with my little 5-Yr old Power Ranger daughter and 1-Yr old bumble bee son walking around the neighborhood. Hopefully, I will not be going back home to watch the World Series.

janeygirl

Scarlett:

Poor Pup! I miss seeing the kids out in their costumes but it would make for a very distressing evening for Albert the Wonderpug to have the doorbell ringing so much. He &quot;protects&quot; me from doorbells that ring on TV (which is why I had to stop watching &quot;Frazier&quot; when it was still on the tube).

degas

Scarlett, here's some more info and the start time:

According to folklore, October's full moon is called the &quot;Hunter's Moon&quot; or sometimes the &quot;Blood Moon.&quot; It gets its name from hunters who tracked and killed their prey by autumn moonlight, stockpiling food for the winter ahead.

You can picture them: silent figures padding through the forest, the moon overhead, pale as a corpse, its cold light betraying the creatures of the wood.

The Blood Moon rises this year on Wednesday, Oct. 27th. At first it will seem pale and cold, as usual. And then ... blood red. It's a lunar eclipse. Beginning at 9:14 p.m. EDT (6:14 p.m. PDT), the moon will glide through Earth's shadow for more than three hours.

Observers on every continent (map) except Australia can see the event: The pale-white moon will turn pumpkin orange as it plunges into shadow, becoming eerie red during totality

sheila

Hallowe'en American? No.. it's Scottish of course.

The Celtic Festival of Samhain is probably the source of the present-day
Halloween celebration. The Celts' new year began on November 1. A festival that began the previous evening honored Samhain, the Celtic lord of death. The celebration marked the beginning of the season of cold, darkness, and decay. It naturally became associated with human death.
The Celts believed that Samhain allowed the souls of the dead to return to their earthly homes for this evening.

On the evening of the festival, the Celts put out their hearth fires. The Druids built a huge, new year's BONFIRE of oak branches, which they considered sacred. They burned animals, crops, and possibly even human beings as SACRIFICES.
Then each family relit its hearth fire from the new year's fire. During the
celebration, people sometimes WORE COSTUMES made of animal heads and
skins. They told fortunes about the coming year by examining the remains of the animals that had been sacrificed.

On the Druid ceremonies were GRAFTED some of the characteristics of the Roman festival in honor of Pomona held about the end of November, in which nuts and apples, as representing the winter store of fruits, played an important part. Thus the roasting of nuts and the sport known as dookin' for apples -- attempting to seize with the teeth an apple floating in a tub
of water -- were common even when I was growing up. The custom of lighting Hallowe'en fires survived until recent years in the highlands of Scotland and Wales. In the dying embers it was usual to place as many small stones as there were persons around, and next morning a search was made. If any of the pebbles were displaced it was
regarded as certain that the person represented would die within the next twelve months.

In the 700s, the Roman Catholic Church authorities accepted the fact that
they had failed in their attempts to eliminate the Samhain observations. Thus, as has often occurred when New Religion clashed with Old Religion, the names of the holy days were changed. Nov.1 became All Saints' (or All Hallows')Day, and the day before became the All Hallows' Eve, or Hallowe'en.

Hallowe'en lanterns, for example, were originally a means of lighting the dark nights and keeping travellers safe from wandering spirits and fairies while &quot;dookin&quot; for apples may have been a form of predicting the future.

This Hallowe'en favourite, which challenges participants to retrieve apples from a basin of water with their hands tied behind their backs, is believed to have once been used to foretell coming marriages. Being the first person to bite an apple out of the basin was considered a sign of impending nuptials.

Predicting the future with lucky charms is another ancient tradition which has survived in the form of special Hallowe'en cakes and mixtures containing coins, thimbles and miniature horseshoes.

Guising too derives from Celtic tradition. The pagan Celts would leave gifts for the fairyfolk they believed wandered the countryside at Samhain and it was customary for people to go round their neighbours asking for donations for the New Year feasting.

Add to this the belief that the world was in a state of chaos at the turn of the year and capers and carryings on were commonplace and it is not too difficult to spot the influences on modern day guisers and trick or treaters.

Even the habit of dressing up in costumes and organizing fancy dress parties at Hallowe'en can be traced back to pagan times when participants in the new year festivities would disguise themselves as the ghosts, fairies and spirits who were believed to be present at that time of year.

Although the traditions are centuries old their appeal still endures with parties, films, cakes, toys and recipes all devoted to Hallowe'en. However, despite many of the traditions having strong Scottish and Celtic roots the celebration of Hallowe'en has become more popular outside Scotland, particularly in countries like the USA.


In Scotland itself the bonfires that used to be lit to herald the start of the new Celtic year have made way for the fires and fireworks marking the downfall of Guy Fawkes and his doomed attempt to destroy the English Parliament in 1605.


We're doing nothing in this house....

LoveItaly

Thanks Degas, had heard about the moon and than forgot when to look at it.

Scarlett in my neighborhood, even though there are children on the block, we never get trick or treaters. It is strange. I don't know why.

Spooky Happy Halloween everyone.

kswl

So true, Sheila. Much of our Halloween celebration is of Celtic derivation. The church did, finally accept that some Celtic customs would have to be accepted (albeit &quot;sanitized&quot for inclusion in the church. The celtic cross, for example, combines a circle--the ancient Druid symbol--around the cross. That gives you some idea of the accomodation that had to take place to keep those pesky northern europeans in the Holy Roman church! The day after Halloween is All Saints' Day, when we honor the souls of the departed. In some Anglican traditions, children dress up as their favorite saints. Some believe that the institution of that feast day so close to Halloween was an attempt to either combine the two or have the effect of throwing Halloween into the shadow of the more important celebration, thereby assuring its demise.

Judging by the number of people who are familiar with Halloween and the scant few who gather Nov. 1 to read long rolls of the departed, I guess we know which tradition won out! And there are those of us who still do both--

Scarlett

Thank you again, Degas!
Sheila, a great history of Halloween, Thank you darlin

OK, next question, anyone go to parties? What do you dress up as ?

beachbum

My wife and I are both dressing up like Martha Stewart. A couple years ago, as part of a benefit fundraiser, we spent a night in a newly constructed prison, and were gifted with sets of prison garb, stripes and all.