5 quirky things you may not know about Halloween
Find out where the jack o’ lantern comes from and what the Irish eat on Halloween, as well other interesting things about the fun day.
WHAT sort of feeling does Halloween, celebrated on October 31 every year, evoke in you? Do you think of spooky ghost stories and horror movie marathons? Or costume parties and sweets and treats to last for weeks after the occasion?
Halloween is quite new in South Africa. Not everyone in the country seems to take part in the activities that go with the fun, faux-scary occasion—which originates from Ireland and was brought to the USA by Irish immigrants—but it does seem to be spreading among schools, young adult parties and corporate get-togethers. More and more party shops stock decorations and costumes, and friends groups and clubs organise parties where you can dress up in something scary or interesting to wow your peers. But how much do we know about the day and how people have celebrated it around the world?
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Here are 5 quirky facts about Halloween that you may not know:
1. Ever calved out a scary face—a jack o’ lantern—from a pumpkin? It’s not an easy job, especially seeing that orange pumpkins aren’t common in SA—although you can sometimes find them in grocery stores in October. The jack o’ lantern originated in Ireland and was used to ward off evil spirits from people’s homes during the harvest period. The carved-pumpkin aesthetic came from a folktale about a thief called Jack who managed to trap the devil and strip him of his powers. When Jack set the devil free, he asked to be given an exemption from Hell. Well, Jack was a thief, so when he died, he couldn’t go to Heaven and didn’t get banished to Hell, so he wandered the Earth with his only light being a piece of burning coal the devil gave him, which he tossed into his favourite vegetable, the turnip, that he carved to let out the light. Turnips were the original vegetables carved for Halloween.
2. Now, trick or treating isn’t practised much in SA yet, but some neighbourhood watch or community police forum groups organise a ‘trick or treat’ for kids in a street or sections of streets. But where did the zany idea come from that kids should walk around their neighbourhood and beg for sweets from strangers?
During the Middle Ages, there were still some pagans around who celebrated Samhain, a religious day at the end of the harvest called the Day of the Dead, when they acknowledged those who had passed on and expected to encounter the spirits of their ancestors around at the time. Because people were scared of bad spirits, they used to walk around wearing scary costumes to chase the spirits away. When Christianity took over as the main religion, they changed the day to All Soul’s Day, and the poorer members of the community used to walk from door to door, asking for food in exchange for prayers or performing plays or songs. The food became sweets in the 1950s when American candy companies used Halloween as a marketing ploy.
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3. About jack o’ lanterns again: The heaviest pumpkin weighed a whopping 1 066kg. The pumpkin was entered into the 47th Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in 2020 in Half Moon Bay, California, USA on October 12. It had to be transported on the back of a pickup truck (bakkie) to the competition. Later, the owner of the pumpkin, Travis Gienger, had an artist carve an elaborate tiger face out of the pumpkin.
4. Halloween celebrations have a different slant in different countries. In Ireland, an interesting tradition is followed where, besides dressing up in costumes and trick or treating, they also enjoy a particular fruit cake called a Barmbrack. It is baked inside a muslin cloth and is supposedly able to tell your future. For example, if a person finds a dried pea in their cake, they won’t get married; a piece of cloth means they will have bad luck or will be poor; a coin means they will have good fortune, and a ring, they’d be married within a year.
5. According to the internet, generally, the most popular Halloween costume ideas searched for are witch, pirate, ghost, devil, fairy and black cat. Every year is different, though, and it’s interesting to look at trends. This year, the top 19 searches online so far, according to Google, have been, in this order: witch, Spider-Man, dinosaur, Stranger Things, fairy, pirate, rabbit, cheerleader, cowboy, Harley Quinn, clown, vampire, 1980s, Hocus Pocus, pumpkin, Chucky, doll, angel, Batman.
What will you be going as this year?
