Radio Disney At The 2007 Jack O
In a very, short two weeks the streets will be filled with hundreds of thousand of Trick or Treater’s. Halloween is just around the corner! Every year it is very exciting time for the young and young at heart. Our clients, who are among the young at heart, are looking forward to some very magical evenings. The festivities come a little earlier at Dreams with our 8th Annual Jack O’ Lantern Stroll, on the 24th at Bellarmine University. To get into the spirit of this fall tradition, they have planned a wonderful afternoon of pumpkin picking at a local pumpkin patch. This activity is part of our Leisure Outreach Program, (of which I will go into greater detail at a later date).
So to set the mood of the next two weeks, here’s a little history or better yet folklore to tell the kids while they are carving their pumpkins.
Trick-or-Treating
In the Celtic times and up till the medieval ages, fairies (a.k.a., faeries) were also thought to run free on the Eve of Samhain. Faeries weren’t necessarily evil, but not particularly they weren’t good. They were mischevious. They liked rewarding good deeds and did not like to be crossed. On Samhain, faeries were thought to disguise themselves as beggars and go door to door asking for handouts. Those who gave them food were rewarded. Those who did not were subjected to some unpleasantness.
In medieval times, one popular All Souls’ Day practice was to make “soul cakes,” simple bread desserts with a currant topping. In a custom called “souling,” children would go door-to-door begging for the cakes, much like modern trick-or-treaters. For every cake a child collected, he or she would have to say a prayer for the dead relatives of the person who gave the cake. These prayers would help the relatives find their way out of purgatory and into heaven. The children even sang a soul cake song along the lines of the modern “Trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat.”
As part of the Samhain celebration, Celts would bring home an ember from the communal bonfire at the end of the night. They carried these embers in hollowed-out turnips, creating a lantern resembling the modern day jack-o’-lantern. This carried on in Ireland and Scotland through the 18th century. A very popular character in Irish folk tales was Stingy Jack, a famous cheapskate who, on several occasions, avoided losing his soul to the devil by tricking him (often on All Hallows’ Eve). Much like the American stories of the devil and . In one story, he convinced Satan to climb up a tree for some apples, and then cut crosses all around the trunk so the devil couldn’t climb down. The devil promised to leave Jack alone forever, if he would only let him out of the tree.
When Jack eventually died, he was turned away from Heaven, due to his life of sin. But, in keeping with their agreement, the Devil wouldn’t take Jack, either. He was cursed to travel forever as a spirit in limbo. As Jack left the gates of Hell, the Devil threw him a hot ember to light the way in the dark. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip, and wandered off into the world. According to the Irish legend, you might see Jack’s spirit on All Hallows’ Eve, still carrying his turnip lantern through the darkness.
Traditional jack-o’-lanterns, hollowed-out turnips with embers or candles inside, became a very popular Halloween decoration in Ireland and Scotland a few hundred years ago. Folk tradition held that they would ward off Stingy Jack and other spirits on Halloween, and they also served as representations of the souls of the dead. Irish families who emigrated to America brought the tradition with them, but they replaced the turnips with the more plentiful pumpkins. As it turns out, pumpkins were easier to carve than turnips. People began to cut frightening faces and other elaborate designs into their jack-o’-lanterns.
Check out this and other Halloween History stories at:
