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It’s Harvest Time
Posted under DD's, Everyday ramble by Recovering Straight GirlIt’s Halloween week, look out for spooks and ghouls, and drunks and sluts.
Also, be careful of clocks that turn themselves back for “Fall Back.” Those clocks did not get the memo that “Fall Back” is occurring on November 3rd this year, brilliant concept that is supposed to save us energy. I’m not exactly sure how this works, considering it’s so damn dark in the morning that I have to have the lights on, AND I have to drive my kids to school because I don’t want them waiting for the bus in the dark. So actually. I am using more energy than I would otherwise. Someone explain this to me?
I love my children.
I miss them when the are away for the weekend. But.
They come home on Monday after school and they DON’T STOP TALKING.
Seriously. I’m talking continuous, non-stop-talking.
Wednesday
is Halloween and I am DD#2’s Room Coordinator for her class, which means that I have planned the Harvest Party. I am taking this opportunity to teach the children a little about the Harvest Celebrations from around the world, which means that all of you, my nice blogging friends on the internet, get to hear my shpiel about it first.
A long, long time ago, The Celtics who inhabited what is now Great Britain would celebrate the end of the harvest from October 31st through November 2nd, and called it Samhain, (pronounced, Sow-en). This marked the beginning of the new year, or the “dark half of the year”. They believed that this was a time when the lines between the living and the dead, were blurred. They hung out, drank, ate, and bobbed for apples, all while trying to stay warm.
Then the religious nuts came into the picture, they were all bugged by the Celtics and their Pagan rituals and GOD forbid, anyone have any kind of holiday that didn’t include Christianity. So they did what they did to all Pagan holidays, and Christianized them with a sprinkle of holy water and a declaration. The Catholics decided that November 1st was a Christian holiday, and named it All Saints Day, or All Hallowmas, a day to celebrate martyrs and saints. The night before All Hallowmas (which means mass of the saints,) is called All Hallow’s Eve, which eventually was shortened to Halloween. Later, November 2nd was declared All Soul’s Day, which had remnants of it’s orginal Celtic beginnings. Celebrations would take place on this day where children would beg for certain food, or “soul cakes” in exchange for prayers for the givers dead relatives. The church was cool with this practice, because it felt that it was better than it’s original tradition of leaving food for rogue spirits, (very non-Christian, very no-no.) This practice of begging for soul cakes or “going a-souling” eventually turned in to our modern “trick or treating.” Trick or Treating, however did not begin until around the 1930’s in the United States when some genius decided that this was a great time for candy companies to make bank.
Go capitalism!
So that’s basically it friends. Now, you’re in the know.
Stay tuned for Part Two of Harvest Time Around The World when our special guest will be LeLo in NoPo. LeLo, (as long as she’s off her sick bed,) will be making a trip out to the Scary Suburbs where she will be presenting a photographic lecture on Day of the Dead celebrations in Guadalajara, Mexico for all the students in DD#2’s fifth grade class. Yeah LeLo! And yeah me for spelling Guadalajara correctly.
Now. Y’all get busy on your costumes. You have only two days left.
I’m still on Pacific time, living in Eastern time and basically messed up. Let’s not throw DST into the mix just yet!
I’m going as a lesbian for Halloween this year…
*raises hand*
Ooooo, ooooo! I want to answer the DST query!
*realises she looks like a complete goober*
Ummm, it was all Ben Franklin’s fault and not everyone uses it.
We’re dressing JT as a bumble bee this year. He’s four months old. Why are we dressing a four month old child? I have no idea. Geo bought the costume; it was cheap (which means it had Geo written all over it).
Almost all Christian holidays have pagan roots. How else do you think the church was able to sell their new religious concepts to the general and illiterate public? It was all marketing! The modern day stuff is purely for the sake of capitalism so you were spot on there.
What makes me laugh is the church NOW calls Halloween evil. WTF is up with that?!
Loved the shpiel. You’ll do great with the classroom. Have a great time teaching the real meaning behind the holiday.
Is ‘fall back’ daylight saving?
I liked your spiel, try to do it deadpan, if you can.
The clocks, they’re making me nuts! Sure enough, Sunday morning, the one on the DVD and the one in my daughter’s room had fallen back! She wanted us to move them ahead — just for the week. I was dumbfounded. Clearly she didn’t know that it takes me weeks to change the clocks to the right time, and there was no way I was adding another step in there. For the rest of the week, we’re just doing the math when we look at those clocks.
All the best with the Harvest Party!
Thank you for the history lesson on evil Halloween.
People are stupid.
Thanks for the info, but I’m glad that all I signed up for is bringing the 24 little water bottles for the Halloween party in my daughter’s 2nd grade class after they parade around the school in their costumes!
You’re very ambitious and I’m sure the kids will be properly impressed… (yawn!) just kidding!
See, that is why I fear I will never want to actually have children of my own. All the talking! I’d just die of an explosion to the head from all the constant and continuous noise pollution of giggling school girls. LOL.
Daughter made granddaughter E a custom Lion costume, at her request (well, at 2 1/2 what do you want). She refused to wear it when it was done. A friend gave them an old bee costume, granddaughter loves it, will not take it off. Still refuses to look at the lion, daughter is upset after hours of sewing.
Moral: buy cheap and save the time, or get it from a friend.
No “Fall Back” is not DST, it actually puts us back onto regular old PST which is what we should stay on if you ask me.
Ben Franklin was smart. Congress, who decided to extend DST, is not. THEY make me cranky.
Why oh why is it that every Halloween so many girls find it necessary to bring out their inner slut ??? Its kind of funny … you can go to a Halloween party and it will be like this:
Oh there is a slutty cop, slutty nurse, slutty cowgirl, slutty …. and on and on and on!
enjoy halloween with your girls!
I’m going as a Doily Dyke this Halloween.
My wife’s gonna be pissed about the doilies.
Yeah, I realized my clock had reverted late Sunday afternoon.
I heart your talk about the origins of Halloween and probably would have paid good money to hear you deliver it verbatim
Very interesting, didn’t know about the soul cakes. Hope the party went well.
Have a question waaay of subject. I saw a pic of you in a Recovering straight girl t-shirt, where did you find that ???
Wait…Doily dykes WEAR doilies? Where? Nevermind, don’t spoil it for me.
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