2009-10-29

Lots of fun for everyone this All Hallow’s Eve

By Judith Pannebaker

All Hallow’s Eve – or Halloween as it became known in the New World – will be celebrated Saturday, Oct. 31.

According to information gleaned from the website www.history.com, the origins of the holiday date back 2,000 years when the Celts lived in what is now present day Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. They celebrated their new year on Nov. 1, which marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter – a time the Celts associated with human death.

Not surprisingly, they believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain – pronounced sow-in – when ghosts of the dead supposedly returned to earth.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts. wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins.

At the conclusion of the celebration, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire. The Celts felt this ritual would help protect them during the coming harsh winter.

Europeans immigrating to America brought their various Halloween customs with them. The holiday became more prevalent in Maryland and the southern colonies than in early New England. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country until the second half of the 19th century.

At that time, America was flooded with new immigrants – especially millions fleeing Ireland’s potato famine of 1846. These people helped popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

Borrowing from Irish and English traditions, Americans began dressing up in costumes and going house-to-house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually morphed into the current “trick-or-treating.”

In the late 1800s, a move in America transformed Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers, than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft.

This year on All Hallow’s Eve, Bandera County youth can choose from an array of celebrations with which to celebrate the tradition, began by the Celts more than 2,000 years ago, including:

• A haunted house will take place from 6 pm, until midnight, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 29, 30 and 31, at the Bandera Dodge House, 2625 Highway 16 South. Additionally, on Halloween night, a teen dance with a live deejay will be held from 8 pm until midnight at the same location. Cash prizes will be offered for the best costume and best dancers. For more information, call 830-460-2932.

• On Saturday, Oct. 31, the annual Fall Festival at the Pipe Creek Community Church will take place from 6 pm until 8 pm, featuring a hayride, hot dogs and other snacks, trick or treat goodies, cake walks, a moon bounce and balloon darts, among other activities. The church is located just off Bear Creek Road. For more information, visit www.pipecreekcc.com.

• The same evening, the Bandera Methodist Church will sponsor an annual Fall Festival from 6 pm until 9 pm. Free games for all ages will take place under the pavilion and hay rides will be offered through the city. Participants are asked to bring a bag of candy as a donation for the event.

• The 12th annual Pipe Creek Community Center Carnival
will be held place from 6:30 pm until 8:30 pm. The community center is located at the corner of Highway 16 and FM 1283. Activities include many free games, a cakewalk and prizes at the Country Store. Additionally, a costume contest will be held at the beginning of the carnival.

For more information, call Eva Evans at 830-535-4153 or Jeanene Mansfield at 830-522-4744.

Additionally, those who would like to venture farther afield for their Halloween fun, can visit:

• The Utopia Little League will sponsor a haunted house fundraiser, “Bad Dreams and Silent Screams,” from 7 pm until midnight, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 30 and 31, at 687 Main Street in Utopia on the corner by the school.

Attractions for younger children include a haunted hay bale maze, fortune-teller and spooky slide.

For the older children, there’ll be a mad surgeon, the Bates Motel from the thriller movie “Psycho” and a depiction of the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Other attractions will include a mummy and a be-headed bride and a chance to pass by a spooky cemetery on the way to a scary movie theater.
Hotdogs, sodas, popcorn, cotton candy and chips will be available at a concession stand.

For more information, call 830-279-2401 or 830-279-6067.

• A Fall Festival will take place, beginning at 6 pm at the Jourdanton City Park on Highway 16 South, sponsored by Cowboy Fellowship of Atascosa County, Community Bible Chapel in Pleasanton and Jourdanton First Baptist Church. Wear a costume or come as you are. The first 1,500 guests will be provided with fajitas and soft drinks, as well as “tons and tons” of candy all night long.

The fun includes a variety of activity booths such as fishing booths, trash toss, face painting, tattoos, ring toss and the yearly favorite dunking booth, among other activities with candy and prizes available at every booth Additionally a special area for toddlers and small children will be expanded this year. Live entertainment throughout the night includes The Wrecking and six performances by the Juggler for Jesus. Gift cards from local businesses and restaurants will be given away in the jugglers’ tent after each performance.

For more information, contact Leslie Stockton at 210-626-0145 or www.cowboyfellowship.org.

• From 8 pm until midnight, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 29 through Oct. 31, Schreiner University’s Texas Sigma chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity will open their annual haunted house in Kerrville. Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for students with ID and $3 for children 10 and younger. For more information, contact Jennifer Hudson-Velazquez, director of student activities and Greek life, at 830-792-7283 or JMHudson@schreiner.edu