Your Halloween/Samhain traditions

[piperdbh]

Fruit on a year-planted tree? That's some good gardening, Ted. Must be all the rain you have.

[Bugbear]

Fruit on a year-planted tree? That's some good gardening, Ted. Must be all the rain you have.

Rain?

They're significant to me, and it is a nice surprise. That's all I'll say.

[fluter]

This year I will be the 11th Doctor. I like bowties, bowties are cool.

Extra credit if you can come up with a "Christmas Carol" scarf, as in the 2010 Christmas special. The Whovians of Ravelry have taken to knitting them, in between ludicrously long Fourth Doctor scarves. It only makes a brief appearance, so there is no canonical pattern AFAIK.

ETA Yes, bow ties are, indeed, cool.

[EHCAlum]

Extra credit if you can come up with a "Christmas Carol" scarf, as in the 2010 Christmas special. The Whovians of Ravelry have taken to knitting them, in between ludicrously long Fourth Doctor scarves. It only makes a brief appearance, so there is no canonical pattern AFAIK.

ETA Yes, bow ties are, indeed, cool.

I have a striped scarf but not close enough for the 4th Dr Scarf. Michelle is dressing up as River Song, but alas she won't let me dress up Coleman as an adipose. He's a smurf, so maybe I could switch the blue shirt out for a white shirt.......

And unlike Matt Smith, I tie my own bowties.

[Drac]

As we live close by, we go over to Sleepy Hollow, by the old bridge and graveyard and wait for the Headless Horseman.

Cool. Added that to my Bucket List. Thanks.

Jim

[Jack Daw]

As a kid in Arkansas, it was still the old tradition to have a neighborhood bonfire for everyone to surround after he kids went trick-or-treating. Today, I hand out candy, but a couple of years ago, I attended a "Celtic"-styled church, for which the pastor hosted a Samhain bonfire and ceremony. He created most of it out of whole cloth, I suspect, but it was good fun.

[Pleater]

Other than gathering the last of the fruit before then, my family has absolutley no tradition of doing anything to mark the eve of All Hallows.

My sister's secondary school did a project about it each year, and we did hollow out a turnip for a few years - but the smell of roasting turnip is not pleasant and it was usually placed outside the front window so we got the effect but not the stink.

There were no trick or treating visits - those who did celebrate held parties, but did not dress up.

The celebration seemed to be of the apple harvest, as there were games such as bobbing for apples or catching them when hung on strings, and contests to see who could peel one all in one strip.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

Oh! That reminds me, Pleater, the schools had a bit of a costume and Halloween event in elementary levels when I was growing up. There would be orange and black decorations of all sorts, like folded crate paper pumpkins, skeletons, and witches, in the classroom for a week or two, then on the "day" those in costumes were paraded through the school, classroom to classroom. There would be candy and so on back in the homeroom, and a bit of a party. Perhaps ghost stories were told. It was fun.

[Ryan Ross]

For Halloween, I'm going to a party dressed as a Viking. Pretty simple.

Cheers.

[Dale Seago]

For me personally:

At midnight, sharing a dram of malt (for the Celtic side) and (for the Siberian-American lines) some tobacco (a cigar) with the spirits of my ancestors and also of my friends who've gone on. Those friends needn't have been human, just dear to me, such as the various ferrets who've shared their lives with mine over the years.

Last couple of years though, I've spent Samhain with my girlfriend down the Peninsula, partly because she lives in a sort of upscale yet vulnerable area and is concerned about things like home-invasion robberies which are particularly easy on such a night. So I'm the one who answers the door with treats and good wishes for the kiddies, wearing a concealed Rule 11 in a hefty caliber in case those at the door are adults more interested in tricks than treats. I make a point of hiding my fangs because I'm the sheepdog/protector of the flock, not the wolf.