All Hallowed Evening
Whether you celebrated Celtic New Year’s Eve [Samhain], the evening before All Saints Day [Halloween], or the anniversary of the posting of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 [Reformation Day], I hope you had a happy one.
Wikipedia does its normally thorough job of covering all of the bases on the holidays that share October 31st.
These are my remembrances of a traditional American Halloween.
The ‘Autumn Festival’ across the street was held last night with a half dozen Sheriff vehicles to control the parking. Kind of back to normal after the Covid problems.
12 comments
pretty much our whole neighborhood turned out all the lights and went to bed early, which is actually what happens most nights anyway, so the kids always go elsewhere for entertainment. 🙂
time has whittled down my thundering horde to just one black cat and one gray cat, but i still look forward to this picture of excise every halloween, thank you.
Excise’s sister, Property is still hanging on, but she has decided to live at a neighbor’s house after her brother went over the bridge. I enjoyed Halloween but the haters have taken that bit of fun away along with so many others.
My Halloween/Samhain celebration has dwindled down to making Halloween decorations, yet never putting them up. I don’t have a problem (knock wood) with haters in this neighborhood, but, with Gary gone, it just ain’t the same. I will make an offrenda for him… and leave it up year round.
There were large Día de los Muertos celebrations when I lived in San Diego. It was a nice continuance of the Irish Samhain. Mother had me putting up all of the seasonal decorations year round, which mainly involved retrieving boxes from the attic, and then returning them after the fact. Life changes when you live alone. The “Autumn Festival” really doesn’t hold a candle to a Halloween party.
agree with you about the haters, but i have to admit that i don’t mind missing all the work (and cleanup) that i used to put into coming up with costumes, decorating the yard, scaring trick-or-treaters, setting up and running haunted houses . . . .
i do drive around town and admire other people’s lawn decorations, though mostly only in daylight hours these days 🙂
They just don’t want anyone to have fun anymore. Retail employees used to be expected to dress in appropriate costume for the holiday. The stores would decorate. It seems like the only people who want to decorate are those that sell the decorations. It’s having Halloween in one aisle and Christmas in the next in September that annoys me.
even the stores that sell the decorations don’t seem to really decorate, they mostly just put stuff out.
and yeah, finding christmas and halloween decorations everywhere when you’re checking out the labor day sales is not the kind of time travel i ever dreamed of when i was a kid. 😈
Next it’s going to be a witch riding a reindeer over a mountain of fireworks in April.
hmmm . . . witches on reindeer . . . merry hallowishmas?
‘Sakes. Just put up ALL the decorations, year ’round, and be done with it. “Happy Holidays” should be ALL holidays… Whenever.
The new post is originally from 2008 and Karen had already left her blog.
with all my favorite authors dying off, i’ve had had to go looking for more. i’ve enjoyed several of donna andrews books but haven’t read this one yet —
http://www.donnaandrews.com/wings.shtml