I have been relatively busy with various things, but The Blonde in the House keeps talking about the fact that there is an election going on. I guess I believe her since I have noticed that when I glance at the TV there are more election ads than there are ads for My Pillow. Obviously, that is a significant number! The ads are somewhat conflicting since some indicate that the candidate is the next King Arthur while others indicate that this very same candidate can be compared with Atilla the Hun. The latter, of course, was not very popular in his time or thereafter whereas King Arthur had the best knights and with his great sword brought peace to the kingdom or so they say.
However, I decided not to concentrate on that. After all, Halloween is coming up. At this point in time you can probably compare elections and Halloween as both seem to involve tricks. Despite that, as I indicated I will stick with the holiday. I mean it is a good old holiday that we all enjoyed as kids. Dressing up and heading out to try and find who was giving out the best candy – or even bubble gum. (Does anyone still chew bubble gum?) They probably do, and I just run in the wrong circles. However, I really do not see many folks in the squares blowing bubbles. Of course, it may be that it interferes with line dancing, and heavens nothing should do that.
The origins of Halloween do go back a few years – about 2000 to be exact. However, not to the Romans who appear to get credit for lots of things. Rather, it goes back to the ancient Celtic folks. They would celebrate at the end of harvest with a festival called Samhain which they mispronounced as “sow-win.” I have no idea why they pronounced it that way, but it may be why it’s called Halloween now.
The Celts also used the day to celebrate the dead. The Celts believed that with all the deceased spirits around on that day (their thoughts, not mine) that their priests were more easily able to predict the future. Concerning that it is too bad that some of those priests aren’t around today. If they were, both political parties in the U.S. would hire them immediately. The best result of that might be very few TV ads as the parties would figure they would know who was going to win and could sit around deciding what they were going to do with their victory.
Obviously, the ancient Celtic people were heathen by today’s standards so civilization could not continue with a holiday called Samhain that everyone mispronounced. By a nice happenstance there was a holiday known as All Saints Day which fell on November 1. That day was also known as All Hallows. Thus, October 31 became All Hallows Eve, and later Halloween. I love it when a plan comes together, don’t you? People in England and Ireland would honor the wandering dead by putting food out for them. Then, someone said, “Aha, why leave good food to the deceased when we can eat it ourselves.” Therefore, people started dressing up in scary costumes to get treats for themselves. They called it “mumming” while we call it trick-or-treating. I kind of like mumming better myself.
Alas, no matter what you call it, the kids this year will be doing very little mumming. Years from now, they will tell their kids, “You have it lucky. Back when we were kids, we couldn’t go out and get candy. Even, if we could have, it wouldn’t have worked as everybody was already masked!”
However, not all is lost as the election will be over before too long, and we can go back to the pillow ads!
Barry Evans writes about “Life in The Villages” for Villages-News.com.
