HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR SOME HALLOWEEN FUN...

http://www.msn.americangreetings.com/ecards/view.pd?i=421179537&m=8070&rr=y&source=msne999

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Silly as it is, I have always liked Halloween. Combination of my favorite season and Kids in costume having fun. No gifts required, just a fun-loving time, especially for kids. Nathan and Adia are Trick or Treating with Lara and friends. They are going home with Wayne for the weekend - just like the last two weekends. Haley and her friend carved pumpkins and saved the seeds for me to bake. Pumpkin carving and seed roasting are one of our traditions. Haley is going out with her friends and going to a midnight movie dressed as Dorothy (not traditional - short, tiny little skirt!!!). She went to Rocky Horror @ Rennaisance last night and Cara went on a haunted bus ride in Asheville. The kids all love Halloween too. I'm home sick tonight watching Halloween movies. Will certainly be glad when this cold goes away! Haven't had a cold for years, so guess I'm due. I have my Halloween shirt all ready to go. Will keep it for next year.

Had a dream last night that gave me an idea for a Christmas gift for Mom and maybe Dad too - a photo quilt. I wonder if it would help her stay a little more oriented and give her caregivers a way to engage her in conversation? Not sure why I was even thinking about it...but I do think it might be a good idea. Have to decide whether to do this alone or make it a family project. We'll see...
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HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA:

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. Because of the rigid Protestant belief systems that characterized early New England, celebration of Halloween in colonial times was extremely limited there.

It was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups, as well as the American Indians, meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance, and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.


In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers, than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft.

For more information on Halloween, see the following URL:

http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween