a deviously concieved idea in the works!

[dduck]

Please, don't feed the trolls.

Iain

[sita]

The most famous night for wandering ghosts is October 31st, known as Halloween. Witches, warlocks and demons and devils all wander about!

In Britain we have parties, we are dressing up in ghostly costumes. We also make pumpkin heads with candles inside.

The USA of course copies us! There kids wander around demanding trick or treat. This means if you do not give them sweets they will play horrible tricks on you.

Fact is the origin of Halloween is very sinister and dark!
It originally was a festival of all the evil powers of darkness. Huge fires were lit to help all the evil spirits to walk among our real world.

It is an ancient pagan tradition - long before anybody had even heard about Christianity. It marks the end of summer and the beginning of winter.

At Halloween all the dead can rise from their graves and warm up at the huge fires. The farmers also finished harvesting and if the crops were good they celebrated happily! They danced around the huge fires full of joy and ale.
Where does the name come from?
The church disguised the pagan origins. They made it into All Hallows = Allerheiligen. This day commemorates all the saints and martyrs. It was changed from May the 13th to the 31st October in the seventh century by the church.

However this tradition never died. The church tortured and killed millions of witches, however the tradition lives on.
The Wicca/witches ( people who lessen evil) still celebrate this day. They call it Samhain! They meet and celebrate secretly.

So you can see Halloween is not just fun.
It has a dark and very important history.
Sadly now it is just a commercial occasion for shops to make a lot of money.

Here is a recipe for Pumpkin Pie

1 lb pumpkin
4 oz sugar
1 tsp of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
¼ pint of whipped cream
8-inch baked pie case
2 oz of chopped pecan nuts

First peel the pumpkin and remove the seeds. Steam flesh. Mash it.
Stir in the sugar and spices, then the cream then pour it into the pie case
Sprinkle it with the nuts and put it into the fridge.

[LarryLatham]

Ah, at last, a breath of fresh air. Perhaps this thread can be redeemed after all. Thank you, sita, for that informative and delightful post in an otherwise rather dreadful series. I could just see your lips curling in a twisted smile as you wrote those words, anticipating the fun. My mouth was watering at the end.

By the way, this is a fascinating sentence:

In Britain we have parties, we are dressing up in ghostly costumes.

I am particularly struck by the use of a continuous verb form here in this communicative situation. How could we analyze its contribution to sita's meaning, do you think? This ought to be high sport, not to mention instructive. I hope there are some students watching.

Larry Latham

[sita]

Hi Larry!

Yikes!


In Britain we have parties, we dress up in ghostly costumes

I guess I was overworked, tired or what the h*ll


Sorry!

And thanks for pointing out my mistake!

Siân

[sita]

The other side of Halloween

For millions of youngsters, Halloween is a chance to dress up, hollow out a pumpkin and goad the neighbours. But parents who see a dark side to it are trying something different.

Last year on 31 October, I bought a big pile of sweets. I then spent the evening answering the door, giving them out in a friendly manner to children in skeleton masks, reassuring my little boy about scary people, and having positive thoughts about Halloween being a time for children to visit their neighbours and be given goodies.

In the morning I found a broken egg on my window-sill, and spent the rest of the day thinkng about what I'd do if I ever got my hands on the little so-and-sos. What is our society coming to when children can't understand the meaning of "trick or treat"?

For most parents, any fears about Halloween will be the safety of their children on the streets after dark.

But for some Christians, Halloween is a danger because it flirts with the powers of darkness, and encourages children to explore the occult.
At Crofton Park Baptist Church in south London, they mark the day in a different way. The church throws an All Saints and Superheroes fancy dress party on Halloween, offering children "a healthier alternative to ghouls and witches". Kids come dressed as angels and Bible characters - a chance to re-use those nativity costumes - or, perhaps, Spiderman.
Why precisely are they so spooked by Halloween?

These parents have traditional Christian ideas about demons, spirits and witchcraft, seeing them as very real influences in the world. It alarms them that children should be taught to think of such things as fun.
Halloween is a celebration of evil, and evil really exists.

Pumpkin parties
Some churches and Christian families explore different alternatives to Halloween. Some have pumpkin parties where they carve letters instead of ghoulish faces, so the pumpkins spell out Bible verses. ROFL
Others go from door to door (dressed unsatanically, of course), but instead of demanding sweets with menaces give out leaflets about Jesus.
Yet when it comes to Halloween alternatives, surely the strangest is the Hell House, at Trinity Church, Cedar Hill, in the Texas Bible belt.
There, an actor made up as a demon guides teenage visitors round re-enacted scenes of Aids funerals, botched abortions and genuine flame-grilled damnation, to impress on them the consequences of sin.
Comments:
Children don't associate Halloween with the occult any more than they associate Christmas with the birth of Jesus.
Paul Duggan,England
As a practising Pagan, I find these attitudes to Hallow'een (or Samhain) saddening. For me, Samhain is a time that I can remember family and friends who have died during my lifetime.
Sharon,Scotland
My mum is a Christian and always used to do a halloween party for us kids. I think Christians who are worried about halloween being evil are barking up the wrong tree. If you want to see the evils of the world, just watch the news.
Helen,Exeter, UK


One of my happiest memories as a child is going to the Halloween party at my local Baptist church one year. The pastor turned out the lights and passed around cold spaghetti and peeled grapes, and told us they were worms and eyeballs. Talk about screaming! What fun.
Sue,UK

Good for a laugh anyway

Siân

[LarryLatham]

Yikes!


In Britain we have parties, we dress up in ghostly costumes

I guess I was overworked, tired or what the h*ll


Sorry!

And thanks for pointing out my mistake!

Oh, Sian, I truly don't agree! On the contrary, I do not think you made a mistake. I take you for either a native speaker, or a remarkably accomplished learner of English, and such people very rarely make 'mistakes' such as you are suggesting, even when they're tired.

In fact, I believe you had something in your mind at the moment you wrote your original words that was best coded in that continuous form. Can you think of what you might have been thinking at the time that would have caused you to write: "...we are dressing up in ghostly costumes."?

Larry Latham

[sita]

Hi Larry!

Actually I copied and pasted my own article

http://www.fun2learnmore.de/modules.php ... =0&thold=0

maybe ghosts changed it

I did not type it all again.

I am a native speaker from Wales.

Best wishes
Siân