Tricks and Treats

Halloween through the eyes of a child may just be the next best thing to Santa Claus and Christmas. The preparations at our house for Halloween are met with great anticipation and enthusiasm by my whole family! Everyone loves a good scare, and people everywhere have their own traditions and rituals for getting ready for "All Hallows Eve". Whether it be pumpkin carving, deciding on a costume, or decorating the front of our home with spiders and cob webs, Halloween is a lot of fun for all ages! And how did we arrive at such a strange custom, to dress our kids up as witches, ghosts & goblins and send them out into the night to collect candy from nearby homes? Apparently the origins of Halloween derive from the Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland in the United Kingdom. They celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. This of course explains the "ghoulish" side of Halloween, how we progressed to trick or treating, I'm just not sure, but I'm not complaining. My favorite Halloween treats are the mini Coffee Crisp and Kit-Kat bars. It's tough to "steal" them from my kid's loot bags though. It's like they instinctively know without counting, how many of each they possess. If you're wondering what to do with your carved pumpkins the day after Halloween, you're asking the wrong person. The rind is so tough to cut through on those things, it's just too much effort to use them in cooking. Our pumpkins usually wind up in the compost heap.