October 31, 2003
Halloween
Today is Halloween ... and everywhere I go online and off, everyone is talking or writing about Halloween! I got this off the Internet but I don't remember where. Ooops! Anyway, it seems that Halloween started with one of my triple quadruple Irish ancestors:
"Halloween is generally thought to date back to 700 B.C. to the Celts in rural England, Ireland and Scotland. On November 1, the first day of their new year, the Celts celebrated a festival called Samhain ("sow-in"), which signified the end of the harvest season, the onset of winter, and a day of the dead.
On the eve of Samhain, October 31, the Celts dressed in costume, lit bonfires, and offered food and drink to masked revelers. Many say the costumes and fires were used to drive away the spirits, and the food given to placate the dead. In later times, the Christians named this day All Hallow Eve, a day to celebrate saints who had no day of their own. The name was eventually shortened to Halloween!
Some Halloween traditions came to America in the 1840s with the Irish escaping the Great Potato Famine. On Halloween, Irish peasants begged the rich for food and played practical jokes on those who refused. To avoid being tricked, the rich handed out cookies, candies, and fruit - a practice that turned into our present day trick-or-treating."
Pumpkin by Heidi:
Halloween dress-up parties are always more fun that door-to-door begging and extortion (what happens to the ones who want to give a 'trick' instead of a treat? The old toilet paper? Egging the house or car?) but what kid would turn down the opportunity to collect a bagful of candy?
Times change. When I used to go around with my brother and friends, we'd bring a big brown grocery bag. We would come home loaded. I guess once upon a time candy wasn't expensive and people could afford to give out generous helpings.
My brother and I would go home for a break so that our parents could raid the bag. They'd pull out all the taffy and other undesireables to give out to kids coming to our door.
I enjoyed parties. It was always fun to get a good look at other people's costumes. The games ... like bobbing for apples ... was always a lot of fun too!
Now I am content to raid the much smaller bags of loot the kids don't want to eat and giving them out to trick-or-treaters coming to my door. 
PAST: Because we haven't delved deeply into childhood trauma lately, tell us about the scariest event from your youth.
After my grandma broke her leg, my mother spent the weeknights at her little cottage. Mom took care of Grandma during the week and on weekends, my Aunt Betty took over. It turns out that my mother always felt the arrangement was unfair because my brother and me were younger than Anne and Robert and we probably needed her more.
Okay, anyway, Mom came home one Friday night and just went to bed. She didn’t feel well and was exhausted. My uncle Bob brought Anne and Robert over to play. He and my dad sat at the table and us four kids watched TV.
Anne said there was a really cool movie on called “House on Haunted Hill” and she put it on. Not long afterward, I was pretty scared and asked her to turn it off. By then, Anne and Robert were really into it and refused. So I slipped into my mom’s room, woke her up and told her I was scared.
Here was the real scary part: my mom rose up off the bed in a flaming rage, rushed into the dining room and began screaming/signing to my Uncle Bob. She told him to get his kids and get out.
I didn’t see my cousins again for almost a year. My mother refused to have anything to do with my aunt or her family. My grandma would cry about it. It was flat out horrible. That really made an impression on me. Terror comes in all forms!
PRESENT: Creepy-crawlies? Heights? Large dogs? Oblivion? What are your phobias nowadays?
I have claustrophobia. I get nervous on elevators and escalators. If I am in a crowded room or theater, I have to be neat the exit or on the aisle so I can get out fast if I have to. I am phobic about diseases and medical problems, especially the new ones. I always think I’m going to catch it or develop it.
FUTURE: Who (or what) do you want to be for Halloween? Price and practicality are no object, here.
I would like to be an Irish dancer, like the men and women in “Riverdance”. I think that is so cool and the costumes are pretty neat too!