Halloween
There is something special about the anticipation of the Irish Pagan Winter Celebration of Halloween. Our Irish ancestors believed that if we didn't celebrate the dead and the end of the year well enough, that we would not enjoy a fruitful Spring which ultimately meant poverty for the rest of the year.
Hunger
During the Great Famine of 1845- 47, over a million people died of starvation in Ireland but a million more emigrated to the USA. There they got jobs in domestic service and of course taught their charges the joys of the Halloween Celebration, namely dressing up as ghouls and vampires!
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Why dress up?
Our pagan ancestors believed that on the night of 31st October, the dead walked with the living. Some spirits were good but there were evil ones which could attack the living. So, we dressed as evil spirits too in order to confound them and so be safe. (Kinda like an episode of The Walking Dead if you watch it).
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Barm Brack
Then of course there is the party. The centre of this is the traditional Barm Brack which is like a raisin bread and it is eaten with butter usually spread across each slice.
Inside this brack were a variety of objects but for health and safety reasons you will only find one object in it these days; the ring. If you find a ring in your slice then you will be married within the year, find a rag or cloth and you will be poor, a penny and you'll be rich, a stick and you'll have a bad husband or wife, a dried bean and you'll never be hungry, a dried pea and all your teeth will fall out! In truth, we are as a nation, fans of the macabre, but this fortune telling cake is taken lightly. I remember my parents running into the kitchen to get more brack so that the good and bad were equally spread amongst us children and friends.
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No Tricks but Song and Dance
It was never a junk food festival but with the odd treat doled out with some Satsumas (small oranges) and monkey nuts (peanuts in the shell). We never Tricked or Treated- that is wholly North American as far as I know- definitely not the original Irish custom. We, had to sing for our treats. So, each child had a poem, a song, a dance, a joke or whatever to tell to whomsoever answered the door. If they didn't answer, it was no big deal. We never egged or threw toilet paper at anyone's house. We wouldn't have wasted the food or the toilet paper to be honest.
Regardless, 'trick or treating' or simply going round to houses is a fun way to meet local people in your community that we do not have any regular engagement with. It's a way of saying 'Hello' without the awkwardness- because we are all in costume so the ice has been broken so to speak.
