Scary Skeletons
& Sparkly Nights
October and November are the months we celebrate Halloween and Bonfire Night
Halloween and Bonfire Night get bigger and better every year. Gone are the days when it was just apple bobbing or a few sparklers in the back garden.
Today, people really go to town with their Halloween costumes, dressing up as witches and ghosts and devils and monsters.
However you like to celebrate Halloween, with candlelit pumpkins or playing trick or treat, enjoy the fun!
Modern-day Halloween is said to have originated from an ancient Celtic festival on a date that marked the transition from autumn to winter.
In Christianity, this tradition on 1st November became linked to the celebration of All Saints Day, and 2nd November became All Souls’ Day, a day to honour the dead, and here many of the Celtic traditions, such as bonfires, parades and dressing up in costume, blurred with Christian celebrations, to form festivities.
All Saints Day later became known as All-Hallows and from this the night before came to be referred to as All-Hallows Eve, which later became Halloween.
Pumpkin carving is believed to have originated from an Irish folktale – about a man named Jack (Jack o’ Lanterns) cursed to spend all of time roaming the earth, with only a burning coal (inside a carved out turnip) to light the way, as his punishment for trying to trick the devil.
And, it is thought the modern form of ‘trick or treating’ has its origins in early medieval pageantry. Around this time of year, usually just before All Souls’ Day, poorer members of society would go from door to door, receiving food (often pastries or specially baked cakes) in return for their promise to pray for the household’s dead relatives. These practises were even encouraged by the church, and became known as ‘going a souling’.
As Halloween looms, people across Lancashire will be marking the occasion with what have become traditional festivities – carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, fancy dress and maybe a climb up Pendle Hill, where the notorious witches coven was rounded up in 1612 for the Pendle witch trials – one of the largest in British history.
Moving on to November and organised bonfire displays have become the place to go. An evening with all the family, eating treacle toffee, candy floss and toffee and wrapping up in wellies and warm jackets. Check out any local bonfires for a fantastic fun-filled night – and don’t forget, stay safe!
