Why I still love Halloween?

Spooky season 2020

Check out my favorite site for all Halloween crafts and goodies for this season.

While the recent pandemic may make this year’s Spooky season different, at least we all have our masks; so why not spice them up a little bit to make this season somewhat more fun.

This is not a new article but my principles have not changed. I love carving those pumpkins and I love to put up the decorations, also trying to check for something new each time around. DIY is so good a hobby, especially when we are at home and have time on our hands to deal with. I like the fun slightly spooky side of the celebrations and I wish people here would celebrate Halloween the way we keep on watching it on all the American series.

I have always been crazy for Halloween. I think the whole obsession started back in the day when I was young and we used to regularly go to the cemetery on this very day, to light candles. There is a very particular mood or atmosphere on this very day, the Day of the Dead which I have always loved. It was beautiful and spooky in the same time. I have always believed the ghosts of the souls who rest in the cemetery are among us at that night. After this all, I came to hear about the US Halloween traditions.So, let’s see some of the main reasons I love Halloween so much.

The pumpkin carving and lighting them up

I have been obsessed by the look of the American Halloween pumpkins especially because we did not have the classic Halloween pumpkins sold here for a long long time, I used our regular pumpkin, cut off its long „tail” and started to carve my very first pumpkin lanterns this way. If you have ever tried to make a lantern from a regular pumpkin you will instantly realize that it’s in fact double as hard to do so. Because the US Halloween pumpkin is particularly soft, light and very easy to work with. I was so amazed when I got the chance to work on my very first American style Halloween pumpkin… I love carving pumpkins and they look simply awesome when you put one or more candles in them. I only wish they lasted somehow longer. As an extra I do like pumpkin foods too, my only sadness is, that noone in my family seems to share this passion of mine.. so what I cook, I must eat it. On a footnote why writing pumpkin

Spookiness

I have always loved spooky and dark things. Nothing can attest to this fact more than the fact that I used to be a goth and still like dark music ( to a certain extent though as we all must have the equilibrum to avoid to fall on one side way too much) we even tried to call the ghosts when I was around 15 (although I guess most teenagers go through that period).. I only feel sorry I didn’t know of the Ouija boards back then.

All the fun decorating at home

Time to embrace the inner magician in us. Pictures like this one below can really make Halloween decorations more fun. I also love the old apothecary bottles and their vignettes which you can freely print on any page.

But my Halloween love is here to stay and over the past few years I have successfully made it to become a sort of a family tradition. We have no trick or treating but it’s a fun little party for the kids and some great chance for me to prove my carving and decorating skills. I have not attended any parties of such, neither can my kid go to do trick and trade, but we regularly throw a small party for his friends where they can dress up in costumes and decorate the house as well as we can for the very day. I have browsed through tons of DIYs while being absolutely sure I won’t have time or the tools to make most of these happen, but hope dies last doesn’t it..

Autumn colors and atmosphere

I love autumn and the autumn colors and this is a season I have always was keen on. This is the start and the end of many things. The leaves fall the school starts and this is also the end of Halloween is also becoming an almost official start to all the Christmas preparations too. All in all autumn is fantastic.

This season’s preparations are soon hitting off ( I know I am late and I am well aware I won’t be able to perform even the half of what we are planning to do.. my son wants to experiment with dry ice this year and I’m way too cautious to try it.. but hey we will see how it works) I will do my best to post some of the better parts of it, as soon as I can. We also plan to watch Ghostbusters and if I find Hocus Pocus in Hungarian then that one too. Hopefully, one day, I will have a proper house and fireplace for me to decorate my patio and my fireplace for it to look just like in the American movies.

I would be glad to learn if you like Halloween and if you do so, why you like it and if you have any easy to do Halloween recipes I will be more than glad to try it.

Dia De Los Muertos

If you thought it’s the Anglo Saxon world which cultivates Halloween and Day of the Dead celebration the most, then you haven’t yet seen how it’s celebrated in Mexico where Dia de los Muertos is a BIG DEAL. You can get motivation to do some special DIYs using the great, colorful motives of Mexican Day of the Dead. In Mexico, Day of the Dead is a real celebration of both life and death. If you feel you need some extra inspiration now, it’s a great time to look into some Dia de Los Muertos DIYs. I have painted pottery which I treasure to this day.

As an extra here is a little picture which I have managed to find on Pinterest on how different nations celebrate the Day of the Dead ( I love Dia de los Muertos sugarskull decorations, I ve painted pots a few years ago). Hope you will all like it. Have a very happy Halloween / Day of the Dead everyone.

Please check out this slideshow where I’ve attempted to give back some of the spirit of Dia de los Muertos.

A woman with her face painted to look like the popular Mexican figure called “Catrina”, poses for a photograph as she takes part in the annual Catrina Fest in Mexico City November 1, 2015. According to participants, about 310 women gathered at the Catrina Fest, where women dressed to look like “Catrina”, a character also known as “The Elegant Death”, created by Guadalupe Posada in the early 1900s. Mexicans celebrate the annual Day of the Dead on November 1 and 2. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso – RTX1UB62
An altar at the 2017 Día de Los Muertos celebration at Santa Clara Cemetery in Oxnard. (File photo by John McCoy, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

I hope to create a post to provide some background of Halloween and its Celtic origins too. Please check out my other spooky posts on Magic, Friday 13th, Japanese ghosts and the selection of Halloween YouTube channels to digest from for this season.

Stay safe and if you can I will be more than happy to accept your contributions to help my channel go on