Personally I don’t like Halloween. Probably because I’m a peaceful person and all those scary masks and costumes that we “have” to wear, don’t look very friendly to me. How could they? Their own purpose is to be as unfriendly and scary as possible. Not to mention that I have a spider-phobia…
But I understand the necessity of such a holiday, though the correct name would be “celebration”. I know the origins were still not yet agreed upon and I believed all of them fused one another and gave the result we have today.
On short, this is what I know about this holiday:
– it marks the end of the harvest season and beginning of the winter. Or of the “darker half” of the year.
– it was considered to be the night when the boundary between This world and The Otherworld gets as thinnest as possible. Some people say it that the gates of The Otherworld open, and the spirits can freely enter this world. Christians consider this day (All Hallows’ Eve) the eve before the All Saints’ Day (All Hallows’ day), which is on 1st of November and the All Souls’ Day, which is on the 2nd of November. Personally I don’t understand the discrimination between saints and rest of the souls. In Orthodoxism these are The Saints’ Day and The Dead’ day – which set apart the dead from the saints, who can be spirits without ever living among us.
– In some places, people let offerings of food and drink for these spirits.
– It is said that the souls of the dead will come and visit their homes.
– In the past there were rituals and games of divination, meant to foretell the future, using apples and nuts. Some of them were: apple bobbing, mirror-gazing (holding a lighted candle in the hand, stand still completely naked in front of the mirror and see will see your future husband or wife), pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, and dream interpretation. Some teenagers still do them today, for fun, of course.
– It implies dressing up in costumes and going “guising”. This has become the trick-or-treat annoying thing of today. Children are disguised in different characters and go asking for sweets. Plain and simple.
– Wearing costumes and playing pranks.
Why do we wear costumes on Halloween?
Some people say it started from “imitating the malignant spirits”. Because the gates of the Otherworld are opened, spirits are free to come to our world and play pranks on us, or even attack us. We don’t have to worry about the good spirits, as they are good and don’t mean as any harm, but we need to protect ourselves from the bad ones.
So, we imitate them, thus confusing them. They cannot recognize us and more than that, we can even scary them. Therefore we dress as vampires, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils.
Only that these days we have forgotten this reason and started to dress in popular characters from fairy tales, ninjas and princesses, or celebrities. It doesn’t matter as long as you are not yourself.
I still don’t like it. But as I said in the beginning of this post, I understand the necessity of it.
It’s a needed change, meant to balance the “all good” tendency of all the other holidays. Like when you are so full of eating sugars that you get sick and want some pickles.
Halloweed does that. It’s the necessary dose of pickles. We take a break from all the beauty marketers are stuffing us with, all the ideals, all the peace and charity. (Anyway it won’t last more, we will be coming back to this very soon, on Christmas) But for now, some mummies, blood, vampires, spiders just cut the nausea.
Not to mention that this holiday has built a huge industry of costumes and offered another good opportunity TO PARTY!
A bee family costumes for a great Halloween party!
And if we have to party, everyone should do it just the way they like it. I have been pleasantly surprised to discover lots of very funny costumes on Amazon.com. And for a family of beekeepers or simply of honey-lovers, there are some awesome costumes to transform us in a family of bees. You’ll have fun and plead for saving them as well.
Check them out and if you want them, click on the images and see how much they cost, they really are not expensive.
Let’s start with the most important persons in a family: the infants. They are the cutest thing in the world, won’t they?
Then we move to toddles. Other posibbilities, maybe not as cute, but still great bees!
Your children are older? Here is a Disguise Hasbro Transformers Age of Extinction Movie Bumblebee Classic Boys Costume.
Finally! The parents.
And of course the dog. He must be protected as well and included in your bee family. Don’t tell me you thought they have forgotten them! Everybody loves pets.
And they have made bee costumes for cats, too. And if you cannot find one, just dress your cat as a lion. No evil spirit will dare to approach your family!
And if your cat dressed as a lion is not scary enough, you can give this responsibility to your dog. It’s way more impressive! 🙂
The accessories are just another treat!
These are great ideas and you have time, and are in the mood, you can try and make them yourself. Why not?
yours, with stinger and everything,
Laura-bee.
PS. no, that’s not me. Of course.
