GaryOsberg.com

Tonight is Halloween, the night before All Hallows Day. According to Wikipedia, the origin of the word Halloween is Christian, the holiday is commonly thought to have pagan roots.

Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while “some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of “Samhain”, which comes from the Old Irish for “summers end”. Samhain was the first and most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar.

Samhain was seen as a time when the ‘door’ to the “Otherworld” opened enough for the souls of the dead, and other beings such as fairies, to come into our world. “Guising” – children going from door to door for food or coins is a traditional Halloween custom and is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895. The practice of “Guising” at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children “Guising” around the neighborhood. I am not sure that there are any outhouses left to tip in central Minnesota.  I do remember trying to tip one in the back streets of Upsala.

Stay safe everyone and please vote on Tuesday. The only thing that counts is that you show up and do the hard work.

“Life is easier than you would think.  All that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.”  Kathleen Norris