Detective Divas - Clue #5

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Halloween’s origins date back 2,000 years ago to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Not to allude to my elderly status but I remember it well. On the night of October 31 the festival marked the end of summer, the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before Nov. 1st. the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred and the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Unlike Casper the friendly ghost cartoon I grew up with, their ghosts were often gruesome and frightening something similar to the way my great grandmother who lived with us looked when she stumbled out of bed in the middle of the night on route to the bathroom.
The Celts thought they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes after dark. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, they would wear masks hoping the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.
For the friendly Spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats at the door and lit candles along the side of the road to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. No doubt those treats were not our traditional yummy chocolate bars. For others, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter. Now that sounds like our trick or treat tradition where we give candy to the ghost, witch and zombie children who come to the door a-calling on Halloween night.
So where did the term Halloween come from you ask? In 1000 A.D. as Christianity spread into Celtic lands, it’s believed the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a church-sanctioned holiday All Souls’ Day, a day to honour the dead. A day to remember Uncle Charlie or Aunt Mildred.
All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes. The All Souls’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows Day and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
In our WI Halloween scavenger hunt challenge, the picture of our jack-o-lantern candle (carved in the likeness of a female of course) wearing earrings, with piercing big blue eyes and long eyelashes holds a snake in its mouth. Is that what gourds eat? And check out that nose.
We felt safe dressed in our snack attire as long as we were not too appetising to gourds, creepy ghosts or goblins. Sharran dressed as a family sized bag of chips, Janet encased in a gigantic bowl of chip dip, Iris a cowgirl sandwiched between two pieces of toast as a toasted western and Brenda as a gumball dispenser represented treats our loved ones could share. Inviting our loved ones in, alas, did not culminate in any friendly ghost visits this time.
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. No matter what your age dressing in costume has an appeal. Happy Halloween fellow costume fans. Feed those ghosts, ghouls and goblins and have a Happy Halloween from the Detective Divas.

Notes

Submission part of the WISH challenge for WI's 125th anniversary.

Date of Publication

Oct 2022

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