Children favorite holidays are Saint Nicholas (in Belgium) or Christmas, because of the gifts; Carnival (in Europe) because of the costumes, parties and parades; and Halloween.

Why do they love Halloween? Adults assume that children love Halloween because children generally love candy.

But children do not only love the abundance of candy at Halloween. They love partying, wearing costumes, watching torchlight parades…

Adults also love Halloween. Especially Halloween parties.

While reading lots of articles dedicated to Halloween, I noticed that people talk about Halloween parties for children or Halloween parties for adults. But they seldom talk about Halloween parties for everyone.

So this year, why not going for a Halloween party for everyone, adults and children?

Obviously, Halloween family parties are often organized: when the trick or treating is over, children come home with their candies and after verifying the quality of the sweets they received, everybody goes in the living room. While drinking pumpkin juice, parents tell
children some Halloween stories.

But there is a way to make your Halloween evening funnier for everyone. What about a pot-luck party? What about inviting your friends and neighbours; married couples or single parents and their children?

Unfortunately, there is a major inconvenient: when she guests a party, the housewife must stay in the kitchen to ensure that everyone has something to eat and to drink and to prepare the meal.

This year, the housewife will participate and enjoy the Halloween party. The principle of this event is the following one: each guest brings different dishes: meal, dessert, pie or drink – alcoholic or not.

Prepare your Halloween party for everyone by creating invitation cards with funny Halloween decorations. Set up a costume theme. Decorate your house. Ask children to help you: they also participate to the event.

The easiest way to guest a Halloween party is by organizing a supper-table. Convert your dinner room table into a supper-table. Place the Jack-O-Lantern on its center and each of the dishes brought by your guests all around it. Each participant will serve himself.

A supper-table is also an excellent way for your guests to be able to talk to everyone and meet new people.

A smaller table in another corner of the room will become the bar area. Fun tip: carve two large pumpkins and decorate them with Halloween theme and fill one of them with sangria or alcoholic punch for adults and the other one with fruit juice for the children. Decorate the drinks with Witch Eyes.

Witch Eyes recipe:

Canned peeled and drained litchis
Incorporate a black grape or a maraschino cherry into each litchi

Plan to have enough chairs for your guests and reserve some space at the center of the room to dance. Put the musical mood by creating some play lists dedicated to Halloween.

Here are some Halloween dessert ideas:

Halloween Lanterns:

Ingredients:
Montain oranges,
Chocolate mousse

Preparation:
Cut the top of each orange
Remove the pulp or the oranges
Draw eyes, a nose and a mouth as if they were pumpkins
Fill the oranges with chocolate mousse
Cap them with the top you cutted
Keep them in a cool place.

French Pumpkin Doughnut
Ingredients:
Cut 500 g of Hokkaido pumpkin into small cubes
2 tablespoon Sugar
2 tablespoon Soft butter
2 lightly beaten eggs
125 fl oz flour
Oil

Preparation:
Put the Hokkaido pumpkin in a pot
Cover with water and let it boil until the pumpkin is cooked and tender
Drain the pumpkin and combine with sugar, butter and eggs
Gradually add flour while beating
File a tablespoon of the mixture into hot oil for about 4-5 minutes
Serve warm.

Have a fun pot-luck Halloween party for everyone!

On the annual Nov.1 is the traditional Western festival of “Ghost Holiday” – Halloween, and Oct. 31 is the eve of Halloween, it usually known as the night before Halloween. But the atmosphere on this day is far from “horrible” as its name sounds.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840′s by Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outbuildings and unhinging fence gates. 

The best known and featured custom of Halloween are just the two – fantastic “Jack’s Lantern” and prank “Trick or Treat“. 

Every time at the arrival of Halloween, the children are all hurried to put on their colorful make-up costumes, wear various ridiculous masks on and carrying a “Jack Light” walk from house to house and begging for holiday gifts.

Trick or Treat 

The custom of trick-or-treat is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village and begging for “soul candies“, made out of square pieces of bread with raisins.

The more soul candies the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could speed up a soul’s path to the heaven.

This is an important part in Halloween days on the dining table, you not only should ready for enough candies and cakes to entertain those naughty “devilkins”, but also to deck out your table with elaborate care in this special day. Never to let your guests look down with you!

 Jack’s Lantern

 The “Jack’s Lantern” custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

The “Jack’s Lantern” looks very cute and lovely, and its could be bought out very simple: Take a pumpkin and hollowed out it, then engraved smiling eyes and a big mouth on the outside, then put a candle in and lit it, so people could able to see this naive and smiling face faraway, this is just the children’s favorite toy on Halloween.

The Irish used turnips as their “Jack’s lanterns” originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

Custom Tradition Review

In the most “haunted” night, all kinds of demons, pirates, witches and extraterrestrial visitors will turn out one after another. In the era before Christ, the Celtics have the custom of to hold a ceremony at the end of the summer to express thanks for the benefactions given by God and the Sun, diviners of the time will light up fires and apply witchcrafts to drive away the demons and spirits that wandering around.

Later, the custom of Romans that using nuts and apples to celebrate harvest was fused with the custom of Celtics on October 31, and In the Middle Ages, people were accustomed to put on costumes of animal designs, and worn terrible masks to drive away ghosts and demons in the night before Halloween. Although the Christianism had taken place of the Celtic and Roman’s religious activities later, these early Halloween customs have been kept down finally.

The Halloween we celebrate today includes all of these influences, Pomona Day’s apples, nuts, and harvest, the Festival of Samhain’s black cats, magic, evil spirits and death, and the ghosts, skeletons and skulls from All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day.

So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite “holiday,” the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.

Today, children wear on a variety of Halloween costumes and masks jokingly to attend Halloween parties, and people has been familiar with the scene of various witches made of paper, black cats, skeletons and ghost figures hanging on the walls of the parties, also in front of windows and doors there are pumpkin lanterns with bare teeth and open mouths or formidable faces.

There is something in the air that is making us feel like Halloween is here. It might be the natural cycle of the earth moving from Summer to Fall in September, it might be the spooky symbols that characterize this festivity and begin to appear what makes think of Halloween fun, but the time for Halloween costumes is here.

Some people believe that Halloween is for children, but this celebration is similar to Christmas, time when all the family join to enjoy together food and fun. No matter the season of the year or the date to celebrate, if you remember the child that lives inside you. Single people have fun organizing Halloween parties and it is a common activity organize Halloween costumes context in which it is a person’s originality the winner.

Of course, children enjoy Halloween costumes and many of them like to design their own rather that buy one or get their parents choosing such costumes. Someone said that the real Halloween nightmare begins when a parent wants his or her children wear the costume they will like to wear rather than the one their kids want.

Adults must not be shy. There are adult costumes that fulfill their dreams to enjoy like children through the night when the witches fly. In addition, not only witches, but also vampires and Jack-o-lantern. The tradition of carved pumpkins comes from the Irish folklore and the story related to Jack of the Lantern and his encounter with the devil.

All these spooky legends and tales are best enjoyed with a slice of pumpkin pie in hand and a great Halloween costume to celebrate at home or go out along with the children during their trick-or-treating activity. Kids of course enjoy going in Halloween costumes door to door to play a trick to each homeowner that refuses to give them a treat, usually candies, cookies and other confectionery.

For children the idea of Halloween costumes can be quite different from that in our adult mind so while some children enjoy disguising as pumpkin, mommies or monsters, others prefers to become a comic hero or fairy for the night. According to statistics, about 93% of American children plan to go trick-or-treating so get ready to help them with their costume if you have kids at home.

Although there are not rules that prevent adults and children enjoy wearing costumes the Halloween night while being at home, visiting their neighborhood or friends and family, there might be a few exceptions when it comes to Halloween costumes. Some people take Halloween celebrations as the right time to visit themed parks such as Disney World and a few others.

Themed parks are certainly an incredible attraction to experience the Halloween atmosphere. Even though, and due to each park’s rules, you may find trouble with admission if you go there wearing a Halloween costume.

Many people unfortunately choose not to participate in this fun holiday simply because of the somewhat strange, evil, and even unhealthy activities and traditions associated with this holiday. Truthfully, they have every right to think this way, because let’s be honest – Halloween is just weird! At the same time, like everything in life, we have a choice to be dictated by circumstance or to create it ourselves. In other words, we can choose to focus on the negative aspects of this holiday and thus not participate; or, we can simply choose to focus on the fact that this holiday also provides a wonderful opportunity to have some good clean fun, spend time with family and friends, take opportunities to serve others, and justify the excessive eating of candy and sugar. Why would anyone complain about that?

Below I have listed just 15 of the many ideas that individuals and families everywhere can implement to make this holiday fun, meaningful, and memorable:

1) Make October 1st ‘Pumpkin Carving’ day. Each family member gets their own pumpkin to carve (or decorate).

2) ‘Halloween Give’ – The day after Halloween, have your kids pick out a few candies and go give them to: kids at the hospital or orphanage, new kids in the neighborhood, children at a homeless shelter, etc.

3) ‘Phantom Halloween’ – Choose a local family who is in need and collect clothes, toys, books, and especially lots of candy – and leave it on their doorstep secretly with a note. Or just choose a friend or neighbor and leave a treat for them from the ‘phantom ghost.’

4) Dress up in a costume and act as a prop, or hide in dark clothes – and scare the older ‘trick or treaters’ as they come to your house.

5) ‘Donuts and Hot Chocolate’ – sit out on the porch every year and have donuts and hot chocolate as you pass out candy.

6) ‘Costume Party’ – Invite friends, family, or neighbors over and have a dress-up costume party.

7) Take a picture of the kids in their costume each year.

Each year, visit a local pumpkin patch, haunted house, or corn maze together as a family.

9) Just have fun! Dress up as you pass out candy, try to scare kids, or ask kids to do a ‘trick’ before getting a treat (and then when they place their bag down to do the ‘trick’ – take it and run inside).

10) Do a neighborhood ‘trunk or treat’ for the smaller children. Go to the local school, church, or parking lot and everyone will park their car in a circle and decorate their trunks. The smaller kids then walk around the circle of cars and collect candy.

11) Make some pumpkin pies or cookies (with orange frosting) and deliver them to neighbors, family, friends, or those in need.

12) Watch a scary movie or read a scary story together.

13) Take a drive as a family one night before Halloween to just look at houses that are decorated around town.

14) The day after Halloween, go as a family and spend an hour or two cleaning up smashed pumpkins from the streets in your neighborhood.

15) Family Game Night – after all the kids come back from ‘trick or treating,’ just spend time together as a family playing games, watching a scary movie, and just having fun eating candy and being together.

As is obvious, the fun of Halloween is actually not in the ‘trick-or-treating’, the candy, or the scary costumes and parties; Halloween is fun and is meaningful because we spend time with friends, neighbors, and family. And although the media, movies, and even businesses focus on the shock value (evil) aspects of Halloween – ironically this holiday can actually become extremely meaningful if we take the opportunity to serve others, have clean and wholesome fun, and most importantly – spend time with family.