As it’s both a
traditional and a religious festival, Halloween is a bank holiday in Ireland
and most schools have a week off leading up to it. Even so, in my 80s childhood,
nobody mentioned Halloween until a few days before and it lasted one day. Now
it’s a mini-Christmas with houses decorated weeks in advance and nights out in fancy
dress are huge for people in their 20s.
I once heard a
sociologist explain that Irish immigrants brought Halloween to the US where it
mixed with other All Souls traditions and now we have imported the American version.
I used to always participate and have sweets for the children until I moved to this house 5 years ago. A couple of days before halloween I bought and carved the pumpkin, usual practice, placed it on a tree stump outside the front door only for some little hooligans to batter it off the door....with eggs and all sorts! So, now I don't bother...........
I'd have to say the whole, lets grow fields full of food just so folk can chuck out the edible bit and carve up the remains. How many folk actually EAT the pumkin?
On the way home from Lincolnshire today we passed acres and acres of ripening pumpkins glowing with an orange light across the Fens .... when we passed them a couple of weeks ago all we could see was acres and acres of powdery mildewy leaves.
I used to make pumpkin soup with the innards of my children's carved out pumpkin and they and their friends ate it when they came indoors from going around the village, or sometimes we saved the soup for after the village bonfire and fireworks on 5th November. But to be honest, the variety of pumpkin usually sold in the run up to Halloween isn't great for cooking ... very stringy and not a lot of flavour ... there are much better varieties out there ... but the chickens always loved pecking what was left of the shell
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
My friend's son works here. http://streamvale.com/halloween-pumpkin-patch and last year (first time they tried it) the pumpkin patch was such a roaring success that he had to send out for more pumpkins and draft his entire family in to help with the carving!!! A good day was had by all...except the carvers!
Happy to report that Halloween is not a thing in France tho it was quite a growing thing in Belgium which is smaller and has huge pockets of furriners bringing in their own customs and thus retail opportunities. Here there are no great displays of tat/witches/ghoulies, no pumpkin carving and no pumpkin pie which is just as well as it's horrid. Far too sweet and pappy.
Mary - stick to pumpkin soup or curry. Yum!
Our patch has produced lots of fruits in a variety of colours and shapes and sizes but we've had no rain since mid June so I don't know how juicy and tasty they'll be and the foliage is a sea of mildewed grey. We'll be harvesting them all soon and arranging them on the front steps to ripen in full sun so we can get rid of all the tatty looking plants.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
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As it’s both a traditional and a religious festival, Halloween is a bank holiday in Ireland and most schools have a week off leading up to it. Even so, in my 80s childhood, nobody mentioned Halloween until a few days before and it lasted one day. Now it’s a mini-Christmas with houses decorated weeks in advance and nights out in fancy dress are huge for people in their 20s.
I once heard a sociologist explain that Irish immigrants brought Halloween to the US where it mixed with other All Souls traditions and now we have imported the American version.
How many folk actually EAT the pumkin?
I used to make pumpkin soup with the innards of my children's carved out pumpkin and they and their friends ate it when they came indoors from going around the village, or sometimes we saved the soup for after the village bonfire and fireworks on 5th November. But to be honest, the variety of pumpkin usually sold in the run up to Halloween isn't great for cooking ... very stringy and not a lot of flavour ... there are much better varieties out there ... but the chickens always loved pecking what was left of the shell
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Mary - stick to pumpkin soup or curry. Yum!
Our patch has produced lots of fruits in a variety of colours and shapes and sizes but we've had no rain since mid June so I don't know how juicy and tasty they'll be and the foliage is a sea of mildewed grey. We'll be harvesting them all soon and arranging them on the front steps to ripen in full sun so we can get rid of all the tatty looking plants.