halloween origins

(found this on theonion.com)


Halloween Origins

Every Oct. 31, children dress in a variety of popular costumes and go door-to-door collecting candy. Here's where that Halloween tradition, and several others, came from:

Haunted Houses are based on Victorian England's "Scare Manors," places where children who didn't mine enough coal were sent as punishment

Giving children candy at the door began when early American settlers realized it was a lot easier than talking to kids about the meaning of death

Much like people today, pre-Christian pagans would throw toilet parchment all over the tree outside their mean alchemy teacher's house.

Jack-o'-lanterns first debuted in 1981 as part of a marketing scheme to promote Monsanto's invention of the pumpkin

The song "Monster Mash" borrows its melody from a medieval Gregorian All Saints' Day chant entitled "I Worketh In The Abbey Into The Darkness One Night (O Monster Of Salvation)"

Bobbing for apples was originated at a Halloween party by a group of people who were patronizing an armless friend

In 1928, Nathaniel Darder of Worcester was the first guy to give out treats in a strategically loosened bathrobe

According to modern-day Wiccans, most of today's Halloween traditions are actually blah, blah, blah


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