Have a safe and fun Halloween

By GRACE POHL

Staff Intern

The month of October flew by and now it is only a few days away from Halloween, the day where you can dress up and be whoever or whatever you want to be, and then go around asking for free candy. What an interesting concept.

I have always thought Halloween is a fun holiday, even though I am the person handing out the candy now instead of going trick-or-treating. It was a day I always looked forward to in elementary school because you were able to dress up with your friends and eat candy instead of doing any academic activities.

I just hope that everyone that is able to go trick-or-treating has a fun and safe night along with receiving as much candy as possible. Because we all know the real fun is when you go home and dump out all of your goodies to see how well you did.

The tricky – pun intended – part about celebrating this holiday, while living in the Pacific Northwest, is that it is usually pretty darn cold by the end of October, so you have to plan accordingly.

But the best part about Halloween is how many fun facts there are about this holiday. Did you know you originally had to dance to get your candy? Me neither. Apparently the experts, whoever they are, trace the trick-or-treating to the practice of “mumming” in which the people participating in the holiday would go door-to-door performing choreographed dances and played songs in exchange for candy.

Another thing I did not know is that Halloween is really more Irish than St. Patrick’s Day is. How does that work? Well the origin of Halloween comes from the Celtic festival for the dead, also known as “Samhain.” The Celts had this theory that ghosts from the dead roamed the Earth on the spooky holiday, so people would get dressed up in costumes and leave out treats on their front doors to make the roaming spirits happy.

The Irish Celts were also the ones who get credit for inventing the Jack-O’-Lantern. But they weren’t always used with pumpkins. The story behind the tradition came from an old Irish tale about a man named Stingy Jack. Based on the myth, the Irish would carve scary faces into beets, potatoes and turnips to scare away Stingy Jack or any other spirits of the night before pumpkins every came around.

Back in the day in Framingham, Mass., teens used to skip the candy part and just went around town throwing cabbage at their neighbors’ houses. Because of this tradition, Halloween was originally referred to as “Cabbage Night” in certain towns.

Also, the most popular candy in the state of Washington on Halloween is apparently AirHeads. I don’t know how people are able to figure that out, but take notes for those future trick-or-treaters and at least it isn’t candy corn.

So to everyone going trick-or-treating, good luck on your cold adventure to get candy. To everyone not participating, don’t be a grouch and complain about kids who might ring your doorbell even though your porch light is off. And to all the college kids who celebrate this holiday in a whole different way, try to be smart.

Grace Pohl can be reached at [email protected].