I’ve always loved Halloween. What kid hasn’t loved going door to door, threatening innocent adults with a "trick" or a "treat," collecting massive quantities of sugar for the sole purpose of a one-night sugar binge. I would eat so much candy that I was soon in an insulin-induced state of shock, running around the house bouncing off furniture and walls trying to find a way to handle the sudden surge of energy that coursed through my body as it tried to force it’s way out through every pore in my being... Then the next morning I’d wake up with a sugar hangover that would rival any alcohol-induced hangover in the history of hangovers.

Now that I’m so much older... (while still maintaining my youthful good looks and childish... I mean childlike sense of humor) I can have my own fun too. Over the weekend, or the appropriate time to really celebrate Halloween, I’m going with a Sleepy Hollow motif at my party. I’ll position the bushes in front of my house so that they create that eerie hollow, and lead the guests up to the house where it’s set up with all my X10 products.

I thought I’d start by putting up a couple of Hawkeye Motion Detectors right out front, and hook them up to my Robo -Dog. Let’s get everybody good and scared right away, and nothing is more frightening than a pit-bull (except maybe a snake, spiders, axe murders running amok, escaped criminals...). I also have the motion sensors hooked up to the VCR Commander, so that once the motion trips the sensor, the video begins recording. That will add a little party flavor. We can all gather around the TV and watch the expressions of the guests as they face their fear of dogs. But wait there’s more. There’s lots more, but I can’t go into too much detail lest I give too much away.

It’s too bad I can’t enter the X10 give away contest, because I think I’ve got it made with my Sleepy Hollow setup.

This year I thought I would do some digging to see what I could find out about this outlandish, but much-maligned holiday. It turns out that it’s really quite an interesting festival.

Halloween, I learned, is celebrated mostly in North America, and Western and Central Europe. The origin of Halloween dates back about 2000 years to the first millennium B.C.E. around a Celtic celebration of the dead which was held on the 1st of November, which just happened to be the Celtic New Year (of course two thousand years ago it wasn’t called November). In Celtic mythology, on this day the souls of those who had died that year returned to the land of the living, and more specifically to their homes, on the eve of the New Year. Perhaps it was to see if their kids were squandering their inheritance.

The festival that we now call Halloween was really a festival honoring Samhain, the Lord of Death (that has to be a tough job... what would you put on your business cards?). The celebration included burning sacrifices, as well as burning costumes that represented deceased relatives. In the more extreme religion of Druidism, they warded off these spirits with offerings of food and drink, built bonfires at sacred hilltop sites and performed rituals that often involved human and animal sacrifices to Druid gods.

By the end of the 1st century A.C.E. the Celts were conquered by the Holy Roman Empire, which began adapting and absorbing those traditions as part of their own religious observances. They blended Samhain customs with another festival honoring Pomona, goddess of the fruit trees (there’s some speculation among scholars that this is where the tradition of bobbing for apples comes from).

Then, as Christianity began to flourish in Europe, Halloween began to take on an ominous and devilish feel. It became mixed with Christian myths of demons and evil spirits. As the myths and legends began to grow around the holiday, and as other cultures began to adapt it to their own religious customs and beliefs, it became more and more entrenched in the occult.

By the end of the seventeenth century, Halloween essentially had become what we know it as today.

Around the fifteenth and sixteenth, and even into the seventeenth centuries, Europe became entrenched in what we call "the Dark Ages." At that point the European Continent became obsessed with evil, and paralyzed by a hysterical fear of witches. We all remember the stories of the great Witch Trials of that era, which were replayed in the infamous Salem Witch Trials. At that point, witches were already thought to ride brooms and assume the form of black cats. Before long, they too were part of "Halloween."

Then came the migration to the Americas. Specifically, the settlements of what we now call the United States. The Puritans, who settled in the North, were adamantly opposed to the idea of Halloween because of its relationship with Catholicism and the occult. But the British, who colonized the southern states, very successfully popularized the holiday. In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants also played a big role in popularizing the holiday here.

As we became less superstitious and more "scientific," much of how we celebrated began to change as well. Now we consider Halloween a children’s holiday, which is really too bad because I get funny looks when I go out trick-or-treating. They act surprised to see me, but I want my candy too. I’ll let you in on a little secret though. When you take the kids out this year, dress up yourself and the neighbors will think you’re so cute that they’ll gladly share a little candy with you. I don’t have kids myself, but I borrow them from my neighbors every year. They know me, and since I’m willing to go out there in the cold and scavenge for that elusive "biggest bag of candy" they gladly turn me loose with the kiddies.

How about a couple of odd facts regarding Halloween? According to one report I read, Americans spend over one billion dollars on costumes and yet another billion on candy. That’s a lot of candy.

Featured Articles - Listing of Recent Postings
August 30 - Cameras Catch the Car Vandals
July 23 - Remote-control Units Help Country's Biggest Student Film Festival
July 2 - The X10 Mechanic
April 19 - FloodCams Catch the Vandals

Customer Stories - Index