I Suck At Halloween

Saturday was All Hallow's Eve... or more commonly known as... Halloween. For anyone curious, the origin of Halloween is linked the Celtic festival known as Samhain.

According to my friend Wikipedia:

Samhain "is a festival held on October 31–November 1 in Gaelic cultures. A harvest festival with ancient roots in Celtic paganism, it was linked to festivals held around the same time in other Celtic cultures, and continued to be celebrated in late medieval times.

Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the 'lighter half' of the year and beginning of the 'darker half'. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year. It has some elements of a festival of the dead. The Gaels believed that the border between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. People and their livestock would often walk between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual, and the bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.

The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks, was an attempt to copy the spirits or placate them. In Scotland the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white. Samhnag — turnips which were hollowed-out and carved with faces to make lanterns — were also used to ward off harmful spirits.

The Gaelic festival became associated with the Christian All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and has hugely influenced the secular customs now connected with Halloween."

Anyway, this year Karen and I decided to have some friends over for Halloween. With Karen in the early stages of pregnancy, we figured that it would be best to have everyone over as opposed to going out for Halloween. Plus, it allowed us to still pass out candy to all the children in our neighborhood.

Needless to say, it was great having our friends over. Our friends (Marc, Kelley, Andrea, and Cass) were able to make it, as well as my BFF (Kerry). I have not seen Andrea or Cass in quite some time, so it was great to see them again.

Amid the local trick-or-treating, we basically hung out and ordered dinner from Extreme Pita located in Norwell. (It's extreme!) It's always fun to hang out. I had a little shaker mishap that got ginger ale everywhere. Luckily, I was not near anyone when the incident occurred.

Following dinner, we decided to watch a scary movie. After all, it was Halloween. We ended up watching Tim Burton's "The Corpse Bride".

(The video below is a trailer for "The Corpse Bride".)


The movie was actually pretty good. And surprisingly, none of us that were present had ever seen the movie before. So the movie experience was new to everyone, which I thought was great. And luckily for Karen, the movie itself was not scary at all. For anyone curious, Karen does not handle scary movies well. It's most unfortunate because I grew up on horror movies... and well... television in general. So, I have become quite inured to all the blood and gore.

Anyway, as "The Corpse Bride" was relatively short, we decided to keep up with the "dead" theme. Completing the double feature was the classic movie, "Better Off Dead". Interestingly enough, Andrea was the only one among us who had never seen that movie before. That was surprising since Andrea is a fan of the 80s like myself.

(The video below is a trailer for "Better Off Dead".)


Needless to say, the movie was good for a few laughs. "Two dollars!"

All in all, even though we did not do much, I had a great time hanging out with everyone.