Halloween Archives - View from the Front Porch

12 10, 2020

4 Ideas for Celebrating Halloween during the Pandemic

By judythemorgan|2020-10-12T07:53:37-05:00October 12th, 2020|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Our morning walks are getting spooky as neighbors began to decorate for Halloween.

This yard decoration is not my favorite.

Not a fan of spiders period. Especially giant eyed spiders surrounded by ghosts and blinking jack-o-lanterns.

The yard pictured below with a recreation of Washington Irving’s 1820 “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is more what I think of when I think of spooky and scary.

I love how the short story about a headless horseman who terrorizes the real-life village of Sleepy Hollow resurfaces at Halloween every year. It’s America’s first ghost story—and one of its scariest.

This doozy 2020 is scary enough on its own. Not sure we even need a Halloween this year, and I know the CDC will not be encouraging us to knock on random doors and share treats with strangers.

We don’t celebrate Halloween at our house. With only Buster and Finn around, it’s like a repeat of all the fireworks on the Fourth of July, too much noise.

But for those of you who do celebrate and need some social distancing ideas for this year, let me suggest four.

Spooky meals

Plan a spooky dinner with things like spaghetti eyeballs, Jack o’ lantern quesadillas, witch’s hair pasta, Dead Man’s Finger hot dogs. Or a breakfast of Vampire doughnuts. Have everyone—mom and dad included—dress in costume!

Find more great ideas here and here

A Candy Search or Scavenger Hunt

Like Easter egg hunts, hide individual pieces of candy around the house or yard and let the kids fill bags or plastic pumpkins with the bounty they find.

Or provide hints to follow for a spooky scavenger hunt to search for a pre-filled plastic pumpkin for each kid. Mom or Dad can hide and jump-scare older kids along the route.

Spend an evening watching spooky movies

Turn the lights out and have plenty of popcorn and candy treats available. Movie choices are almost endless from tame (It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!) to terrifying (Annabelle) and lots in between (Hocus Pocus).

Find movie suggestions at Rotten Tomatoes or Good Housekeeping.

Take a ride around the neighborhood and enjoy the Halloween displays.

If you neighborhood is like ours, it’ll be a scary ride.

Halloween won’t be the same this year, it’s true. Not much has been since COVID-19 arrived. But we can enjoy the seasons by finding new ways to approach what we’ve had to put aside for now.

31 10, 2018

Halloween Inspiration – Linus

By judythemorgan|2018-09-25T22:07:04-05:00October 31st, 2018|Holidays, Wednesday Quote, Weekly Quote|1 Comment

This Halloween may your pumpkin patch as well as Linus’ patch be found without a sign of hypocrisy.

1 10, 2018

Do mushroom rings appear in your yard?

By judythemorgan|2018-09-25T16:11:51-05:00October 1st, 2018|Make Me Think Monday, Writer's Life|1 Comment

As seasons transition from spring to summer or fall to winter, there’s lots and lots of rain and these little mushroom rings pop up in yards.

Fairy rings, as these sprouting mushrooms are called, frequently appear after wet weather. The bizarre rings are also found in parks and woods.

The mushrooms don’t last long, but the fungi living under the ground can grow for many years. You can spot a fairy ring when there are no mushrooms by a visible circle. Sometimes the circle is lush and green other times it’s a ring of dead grass. It depends on the type of underground fungi.

Fairy rings need nutrients in the soil to grow mushrooms and, without obstructions to inhibit outward growth, can grow as large as a quarter-mile like the one in Belfort, France that is thought to be over 700 years old.

The arcs appear in lawns because we fertilize to nourish the mushrooms. Organic stuff especially offers plenty of food for a fairy ring. Over sixty mushroom species grow from fairy rings. Some are even eatable, but be cautious some of the mushrooms can also be poisonous.

For me the most interesting part of fairy rings is their mysterious reputation and mystical legends.

Also called elf circle, elf ring, or pixie ring, these arcs of mushrooms are said to be portals to unearthly worlds where fairies and witches dance. According to English legends, the mushrooms serve as stools for fairies after nights of revelry.

Many folk beliefs paint fairy rings as dangerous places, best to be avoided as this illustration title Plucked from the Fairy Circle depicts.

By T. H. Thomas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Entering a ring on May Eve, Walpurgis Night (the Swedish Halloween night), or Halloween night was considered especially dangerous. That’s when sacred fairies and their clans are said to appear within the rings in angry and scary moods

Source: commons.wikimedia.org File:Fairy_Rings_and_Toadstools_by_R_Doyle.jpg

It makes me smile to think of friendly fairies dancing around in our yard’s fairy rings or resting on a toadstool.

But, you won’t find me out looking around on a Halloween night.

If you prefer not to have fairy rings growing in your yard, you can destroy the mushrooms using your lawn mower. That offers a temporary fix but doesn’t kill the underground fungi. Here’s a guide that will help you permanently remove fairy rings: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/kill-fairy-ring-mushrooms-45931.html

30 10, 2017

Where did Halloween come from?

By judythemorgan|2017-10-05T10:20:13-05:00October 30th, 2017|Holidays|0 Comments

Halloween’s origin dates to The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in Ireland, United Kingdom, and France.

Celts believed the boundary between worlds of the living and the dead became blurred the night before their New Year, which is November 1^st.

On October 31^st they celebrated the festival of Samhain, lit bonfires, and wore costumes to ward off roaming ghosts.

In the eighth century Pope Gregory III designated November 1^st as a time to honor all saints and martyrs and incorporated some Samhain traditions.

October 31^st became All Hallows’ Eve and eventually Halloween, the secular, community-based events filled with craved pumpkins and trick-or-treat, that we celebrate today.

But why crave pumpkins?

An Irish myth about an old drunk called “Stingy Jack” is said to be the reason.

Can you guess why he was called stingy? Of course, because he never wanted to pay for his drinks.

Read the full story here or watch to the fun, spooky video below:

The Irish used turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets for their lights to keep Stingy Jack away and ward off evil spirits on All Hallow’s Eve. Pumpkins became the jack-o-lanterns when waves of Irish immigrants came to America to escape the Potato Famine. They quickly discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out.

Oh, and one more tidbit of information about jack-o-lanterns. This advice comes from the antique dealer me, not the Irish storyteller. Be careful where you display your cleverly carved jack-o-lanterns. The base of a pumpkin can stay moist for days and will rot and stain wood or even marble. Put either foil or a dish with a raised edge under any pumpkins or gourds you display this fall. I’ve stained more than one old piece of furniture decorating for fall with gourds and tiny pumpkins.

28 10, 2013

Why do we carve pumpkins on Halloween?

By judythemorgan|2017-10-05T09:45:17-05:00October 28th, 2013|Make Me Think Monday|5 Comments

This week is a time of celebration and superstition and tradition. It’s Halloween.But do you know why we celebrate Halloween?

The origins date back to The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in Ireland, United Kingdom, and France.

November 1^st was the beginning of the Celtic New Year. The Celts believed the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred the night before their New Year. On October 31^st, the New Year’s Eve, they celebrated the festival of Samhain. People would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts.

By the eighth century the traditions evolved when Pope Gregory III designated November 1^st as a time to honor all saints and martyrs, incorporating some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before became known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween.

Through the years, Halloween has become the secular, community-based event we know today.

That’s the history of the holiday, but the Irish in me loves finding the story behind the holiday traditions.

Like the legend behind making jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween decorations, which originated from an Irish myth about an old drunk called “Stingy Jack.”

Can you guess why he was called stingy? Of course, because he never wanted to pay for his drinks.

As the story goes, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him.

When it came time to pay, true to his name, Stingy Jack talked the Devil into turning himself into a coin he could use to pay for their drinks… And then the story gets interesting.

Jack dies. But, because he made deals with the devil, God won’t let him into heaven. Because of his deal with the devil not to take his soul, he can’t go to hell.

So Jack roams the dark Halloween night with a burning coal in a carved-out turnip. The Irish refer to his ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” or “Jack O’Lantern.”

Read the full story here or watch to the fun, spooky video below:

On All Hallow’s Eve, the Irish hollow out turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets then place a light inside to keep Stingy Jack away and ward off evil spirits.

Turnip Jack-o-lanterns changed to pumpkin jack-o-lanterns when waves of Irish immigrants came to America in the 1800’s to escape the Potato Famine. They quickly discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out.

And thus begin our tradition of carving and lighting pumpkins for Halloween.Oh, and one more tidbit of information about jack-o-lanterns. This advice comes from the antique dealer me, not the Irish storyteller.Be careful where you display your cleverly carved jack-o-lanterns. The base of a pumpkin can stay moist for days and will rot and stain wood or even marble. Put either foil or a dish with a raised edge under any pumpkins or gourds you display this fall.