Happy Halloween!

The Candy King


There was a king who loved Halloween


He waited each year for this scary scene.


He sneaked out to hang on his door


Black bats and witches and spooks galore.


The midnight hour was his favorite time


With monsters covering snakes with slime.


As twelve o'clock chimed through the stars


He opened up his snickers bars.

The Cats and The Bats


The cats scare me and so do the bats

And both of them wear funny hats.

The bats hang upside down at night

They are a silly crazy sight.


The cats all like to hiss and fight.

They sit on the steps in the bright moonlight.

My favorite creature is a ghost

Because he's so spooky on a post.




Happy Halloween all my dear friends!:)

* Original address of this China gift post: Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween VII: How to Make a Halloween Pumpkin Lantern?

How to Make a Halloween Pumpkin Lantern?

Steps 1. Cut

Cut a hole around the top or botton of the pumpkin (the size of the cutted hole should not be too large, but also not be too small to make your hand stretched inside and draw the pumpkin fleshes out

Tips: You should pay more attention on during your cutting and try your best to make the cut surface smoth and tidy.

Steps 2. Draw Out & Shaving Thin

Using a special spoon (a spoon for daily use also is fine) stretch into the pumpkin and draw out the seeds and fleshes of it. Then select a place on the pumpkin skin, on which you are ready for carving, and shave the pumpkin peel thin to about 1 inch thick.

Step 3: Paste Paper Face

Selected a place on the pumpkin and paste or tack the paper face you prepared before.

Tips: Please pay attention to put the tacks in accordance with the dotted lines of the paper face when tacking, thus to avoid producing small holes on the pumpkin skin.

Step 4: Carve and Draw along with Broken Lines

Follow the dotted lines of the paper face and using a small cone or a thumb pin draw out the face figure on the pumpkin skin, and torn down the paper face when finished.

Step 5: Seeing The Results

Finally, to see your results, and using a small cone to amend it point-to-point furthered. So a wonderful work has taken birth and just Picasso is hard to follow!

Happy Halloween VI – Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Do you believe in ghosts?

The Associated Press and Ipsos Survey carried out a poll before Halloween, and the public opinion showed that 34% of the respondents said their believed in ghosts.

On the other hand, there are peoples in a same proportion as the above who believe that unidentified flying objects are existed. In addition, the survey shows that 19% of the respondents believed that the “magic power” was existed in the world.

48% of target people believe that the "super-aware" (referring to the perception of ultra-sensory) exists.

23% of the respondents said they had seen ghosts, in which the number of bachelors, Catholics and those persons who have never attended liturgy said “had seen ghosts” is biggest.

30% of the respondents said they believed there are something strange in the room when they waked up.

14% of the respondents (most of them are men and low-income peoples) said they had seen unidentified flying objects.

One-fifth of the respondents said themselves were somewhat superstitious, in which young men, minorities and especially less educated people inclined more. 26% of urban residents said they believed in superstition, and single men are even more superstitious than single women, the ratio of which was 31% and 17% respectively.

The survey revealed that the number of people who believed that "the Four Leaf Clover could help you meet luck" is biggest, which accounting for 17% of the respondents. 13% of people thought walking under the ladder will be down on one’s luck, or if the bride and groom had meet before the wedding was inauspicious. And there are a small portion of the respondents considered that the black cats, broken mirrors, to open a umbrella in the room, "Black Friday", the number 13 are all symbols unlucky.

* Four Leaf Clover

In a word, women are more superstitious than men with four leaf clover, broken mirror and the saying of the bride and groom’s meeting before the wedding is hapless and so on; more Democrats are more superstitious with "it’s inauspicious open a umbrella in the room" than Republicans; Liberalisms are more superstitious than conservative persons who believed that four leaf clover could bring you good luck, the bride and groom meet before the wedding is inauspicious and it’s unlucky to open a umbrella in the room.

The telephone survey was carried out during in Oct. 16-18, 2008, and a total of 1013 adults had participated in.

Happy Halloween II --- Halloween Customs (up part)

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!

(not finished to continue….)

Happy Halloween I - The Origin of Halloween

At first, let’s talking about the origin of word “Halloween”: a lot of nations on the eve of Halloween will held a celebration gathering, which also be called "All Hallow E'en", "The Eve of All Hallows", "Hallow e'en", or "The eve of All Saintas' Day ", and last evolved as a convention into "Halloween", in Chinese we call it “the night of Halloween”.

Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom come from? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?

In the Medieval Ages, the central Europe had a history of demolishing heathens, but the sacrifice ceremony before the New Year’s night has never been reclined indeed, and just appeared in the form of wizard. That’s why in today’s Hallowmas, we are still familiar with witch’s brooms, black cats and curses.

Halloween is one of the oldest holidays with origins going back thousands of years. The holiday we know as Halloween has had many influences from many cultures over the centuries. From the Roman's Pomona Day, to the Celtic festival of Samhain, to the Christian holidays of All Saints and All Souls Days.


Hundreds of years ago in what is now Great Britain and Northern France, lived the Celts. The Celts worshipped nature and had many gods, with the sun god as their favorite. It was "he" who commanded their work and their rest times, and who made the earth beautiful and the crops grow.

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.

One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.

Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.

The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.

With regard to the origin of Halloween, the most referred legend viewed that Halloween was came from the ancient Western European countries before the birth of Christ, which mainly includes Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These ancient Western Europeans were also called Celtic or Druids. The date of Celtic or Druids’ New Year is on November 1, and in the New Year’s eve, young peoples in Druids were gathered in a team and worn various weird masks, carried carved radish lamps and wandered between villages.

The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.

Here is necessary to explain that the pumpkin lamp is a custom appeared lately, and there’s no pumpkin in ancient Western Europe. In fact, the Halloween is a ceremony that celebrated for the autumn’s harvest, and it also was said as a “ghost day", there’s a legend said that the souls of people who dead in the current year will return to visit the world, so live peoples should let the souls returned see the scenery of their successful harvest and give them an abundant feast. So all needfires and lamps were used to scare sway the souls of ghosts, and the same time to illuminate the return road for the ghosts and to guide them back.