Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Halloween!

Halloween – that crazy holiday when people get dressed up in weird and scary costumes, carve big squashes into faces, and eat a lot of candy – is here.

Yes, I know. It’s crazy. Also fun.

And the Adult School will be celebrating it.

This Friday October 31 (the official date of All Hallow’s Eve) there will be pumpkin carving, a costume contest, and of course, because we all like to eat, sweets and treats.

Here’s the plan for the day:

Classrooms will carve their pumpkins and then take them to the judging center for judging.

10:15 a.m. People in costumes will gather around the flag pole.

They might look like this:



There will be a parade of these beautiful people. Important judges will choose the three best costumes. Everyone in a costume will be in a lottery where they can win exciting prizes.

After all this excitement, there may be a dance (and of course, food).

And what are we celebrating, exactly?

Well, Halloween is a strange and old holiday that is a little hard to explain.

It started with the Celts. These people lived in England, Ireland, and France.
November 1 was their New Year’s Day. October 31 was their New Year’s Eve.
The name they called New Year’s Eve was Samhain (pronounced SOW – in).

Many of our Halloween traditions come from Samhain. The Romans added things – like apples – when they took over England for a while. Bobbing for apples – putting your face in a bucket of water and trying to bite an apple with your teeth – is an old tradition we don’t do much anymore. (I wonder why. ;-))

The Romans also brought Christianity to England. Samhain became part of All Hallow’s Eve – the evening before the Day of All Hallows – All Saints.

When English people came to North America they discovered squash and pumpkin is a kind of squash. It also makes better jack-o-lanterns than the root vegetables they used back home.

Pumpkin is also very good to eat. Teacher Shari makes some amazing pumpkin cookies and I am going to ask her if I can share the recipe with you. Yummm… to die for!

(What does “to die for” mean? Do you have to die to eat these cookies?)

If you want to read more about Halloween and how it got started you can go here:
http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween/viewPage?pageId=713

If you want lots of general information about Halloween, you can go to Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween.

If you have kids and you are looking for fun Halloween events for your family, you can go to http://www.sfkids.org/ or http://www.friscokids.net/ for ideas.

It’s a crazy holiday – but a fun one. Enjoy!

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