It’s always a fun time of year for most as we get to dress up in costumes and parade around town without a care in the world. The question I have is do we really know how Halloween got started or where it originated? I am sure many people do not and there are many others who do not even celebrate the holiday as they feel it is celebrating evil. So I thought I would share a little history with my fellow trick- or-treaters.
According to Wikipedia the roots of Halloween came from the Celtic Festival of Samhain and the Christian Holy day of all Saints. It originated in Europe and then came to America by immigrant settlers. The word Samhain means the summer end. The Celts believed the border between this world and the other world became thin during this time allowing evil spirits to enter into this world so they wore evil customs’ to trick the evil spirits into thinking they were evil too so they did not harm them (Wikipedia.com). They use the colors orange and black to represent Halloween because orange represents the harvest and black represents the evil spirits. It gives you a better understanding of the holiday and the history behind it.
I personally love this holiday because I enjoy dressing up. I have never been much of a creative person so I enjoy watching the creative minds of others. Over the years I have seen some really neat costumes. One year I saw a guy who dressed up as a night stand. He wore a lamp shade and then made a table around him and dressed it up with an alarm clock, reading glasses and a book. It was pretty neat!
For Halloween I normally just go out and buy something to wear verses trying to come up with something on my own. However this year I could not afford to go out and buy anything so I needed to come up with something using whatever I had from past years and clothes in my closets. So I decided to be a Greek Goddess because I already had gold rope, gold jewelry and a white dress…put it all together, do my hair and you have a Greek Goddess costume. It was very easy and I got a lot of compliments on it. My boyfriend was a pimp using parts of a Halloween costume from a few years ago. His brother and sister-n-law dressed up as gothic punk rockers using old costume parts and his cousin was a 70’s guy using some of his parent’s old clothing. No one spent any money and we put together some great outfits.
It’s a fun time of year and I can’t wait until I have children to celebrate with and carry on the traditions. I see Halloween as a time to go trick-or-treating, have fun dressing up in costume, telling ghost stories and carving pumpkins. For those who celebrated, I hope you had a great time dressing up and carving pumpkins.