So the roommate and I carved pumpkins today, and mine, which was deformed to begin with, looks totally psychotic (: hers is all pretty though and is carved like Jack Skellington.
Since we were all Halloween Spirit today I looked up a couple of things about Halloween, some I already knew, others not so much. See I have this book called Signs and Symbols Sourcebook, but it should really be called the book of random facts and stuff that really just doesn’t make sense to be in a symbols book. But I was trying to find Jack-O-Lanterns to see if it would give me any cool facts about those, but, big shocker here, there wasn’t an entry for Jack-O-Lanterns, or even for pumpkins! But as I was just randomly flipping through the pages I happened upon an entry about Halloween, which included a definition of Jack-O-Lanterns and pictures of pumpkins (no… it really doesn’t make sense at all).
ANY WAY onto my interesting facts about Halloween (:
Halloween is the abbreviation for All Hallows Eve, I knew that part, but I didn’t realize that it’s the day before All Saints Day, which I guess is November 1st? I guess since I’m usually coming down from a sugar high and fighting off a candy-hangover on November 1st I never realized it was a holiday too (:
See Halloween comes from Christianity’s attempt at associating their own festivals with pre-existing ones, in this case the Samhuin Festival (: Originally the Samhuin Festival was one of the Wheel of the Year festivals, in total there are 8 and they originated from the Celtic world. The Samhuin Festival was basically a celebration for the dead, and was a big feast and stuff. Since the time of year the Samhuin Festival is in is around harvest time, it’s really a time associated with the closing down of the year and a time of death, since people would be bringing the animals back in so they didn’t freeze outside, I guess people figured it was a good time to welcome the dead back too. Bonfires were lit and bells were rung in order to guide the dead back to the world of the living. It is also the day that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was considered to be at its thinnest, allowing communication between the two sides to be easier than it normally would be.
Now I guess if you want to find a way into the World of the Dead, do it on Halloween. And if you’re wondering how, well let’s just say this book is SO helpful in every aspect aside from what’s it’s supposed to help with, it even tells you how to gain entry into this other world (: Don’t ask me what a Tumulus is or how to tell if a place has fairy associations, but you find one of these and run around it 9 times if you want to try to get to the world of the dead. Now if you ask me, running around something 9 times probably really is enough to kill someone so maybe that’s what the book is getting at (:
And it turns out even Apple Bobbing has a reason for being practiced on Halloween too, because apples are sometimes associated with the Underworld.
Also, although I think most people knew this already, people decorate their homes with things intended to scare away demons. Although I doubt that’s the reason most people do it anymore, that’s why people started doing it in the first place.
The book also threw in some random facts about witches, and how they can make boats from undamaged pieces of eggshell? Yeah, this book is so random… but interesting at the same time XD
The really interesting thing if found from the book is that Halloween is also sometimes called Nutcrack Night (yeah if you’re thinking of the Nutcracker and how it’s associated to Christmas… it’s ok, so was I) and since nuts are symbolic of promise and fertility they can be used to determine a future lover. So what you do is name nuts after eligible people and place them in a fire, the first one to crack in the heat is the one that signifies a future lover. Not something I would ever do, but hey, any of you who are having love troubles, give this a try (:
Really interesting stuff mostly, but whoever wrote this book must have been on crack or something because what’s in it doesn’t make sense, or the fact that some things aren’t in it… like the symbolic meaning of pumpkins, but whatever! (:
Well so much for my random rant about Halloween (: hopefully I didn’t just give a big long speech about things that everyone already knew and didn’t think was interesting… but oh well if I did right! XD
Anyway (: not much interesting happened today, so there really wasn’t anything else for me to ramble about, aside from a lengthy, unnecessary description of the grueling process that was gutting and carving my pumpkin (: not sure how I would describe that anyway
