Put to shame! » « A very dirty guest

Halloween decorating: done

We just tossed up one giant spider, a couple of smaller spiders, and the dessicated, skeletal corpse of a scientist next to our driveway. Preparations complete. We also have a bag of 200 pieces of candy waiting to be devoured by someone other than ourselves.

It’s not much, but it’s something.

Put to shame! » « A very dirty guest

Comments

  4. hillaryrettig1 says

    Great spider but you might want to rethink the position of the human’s left hand.

  5. rwiess says

    Neighbors have a motion activated spider, about 2′ across, that lunges toward the sidewalk when anyone walks by. I don’t recommend it, as a major side effect is making many passing dogs bark.

  6. John Morales says

    Heh. It always amused me that Halloween used to be a day of dread in most cultures, until the USAnians got on to it.

    Now it’s all fun and games, but back in the day, it was gothic dread.
    No cutesy kiddies gamboling along.

    I remember reading this at school: https://ciudadseva.com/texto/el-monte-de-las-animas/
    (7 de noviembre de 1861, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer)

  8. Silentbob says

    @ 6 Morales

    Heh. It always amused me that Halloween used to be a day of dread in most cultures, until the USAnians got on to it.

    Heh, indeed.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween#Trick-or-treating_and_guising

    In Scotland and Ireland, guising—children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins—is a secular Halloween custom. It is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money. In Ireland, the most popular phrase for kids to shout (until the 2000s) was “Help the Halloween Party”. Author Nicholas Rogers cites an early example of guising in North America in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, reported children going “guising” around the neighborhood.

    American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US: The Book of Hallowe’en (1919), and references souling in the chapter “Hallowe’en in America”. In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; “Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries”.

    But please, tell us more, O wise historian.

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