Trick or Treatin'

Halloween....what a wonderful time of fun, costumes, masks, and scarey things that go bump in the night....oh and of course CANDY. I have always loved Halloween since I can remember. I grew up in Orange County, Calif where it was Very easy to fill a bag in just a few blocks. For my Grandsons, things are a little different. Growing up in the country where there aren't many people means your Great Grandparents had better live in TOWN in a pretty cool neighborhood for Trick or Treatin'.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.
What I didn't know was....
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called 'souling'. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven. Kinda a twist to the Day of the Dead traditions of our southern countries, don't you think??







Sorry...just had to share.