Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Jack O'Lantern


This is our Jack O'Lantern, carved by Sallyanne and photographed by me.I felt the urge to buy a pumpkin today at the shop.
The pagan festival of Samhain, All Hallowed eve, All saints eve.
I love this celebration, the goblins, vampires, and ghosts.Things going bump during the night.
Its suitably dark, cold, and windy outside.
We only had one lot of trick or treaters.My fav memory was when my Dad was in the Army we lived near an American base.The amount of sweets me and my sister collected astounded me.
The Americans celebrate it with more gusto than the English.The pagan overtones upsets the more straight religeous ones.
That is the great thing about the English, the public holidays have become mixture of old pagan beliefs and christian celebrations.
Its hard to know where one begins and one ends...
I worked today a normal tuesday.The buses ran smooth finally after a few days of wierdness.I have two days off to tidy the windswept garden, and sort out my seedlings!
I read Halloween was the old festival to celebrate the end of summer, fires are lit, lanterns hung up, sweets ready for giving, children go out to collect sweets for the celebration.
If you celebrate halloween hope you are having a good one!!

3 comments:

Silvia Hoefnagels . Salix Tree said...

Our Halloween was filled with kids running around, collecting sweets. This was the first year we almost ran out of chocolate bars to hand out! Some even came and sang songs at our door. Then there were lots of fireworks and later on a huge bonfire. Was the best Halloween for many years! I love living at the edge of this little village.

Philosophical Karen said...

I've posted my jack-o'-lantern pictures too. We had a great celebration, with lots of little ones all dressed up in adorable costumes coming by with their parents. The older children go to the next street over, where there are more houses and they can get a lot more candy.

David (Snappy) said...

Salix tree, it sounds idyllic.Glad you enjoyed it.I read that it has more resonance halloween in Ireland than here..
Karen, i loved the frankenstein and froggy halloween lamps.It was very imaginative.Inspiring for me for next year.
Karen