Halloween - The Dead Walking Amongst Us
Halloween is the scariest time of the year...or is it? What is Halloween exactly? Well, originally it was created as a way to get the celts to assimilate with christian culture. Much like the association of the virgin mary as a goddess which brought pagans in who were used to praying to both a god and a goddess. They borrowed the tradition of Samhain which marked an end to the harvesting season and the beginning of winter. It's also been linked to the roman festival of the dead. Where all of these traditions coincide is as a time period for which the border between the realms of the dead and the living is at its thinnest. According to tradition, All Hallow's Eve (Hallowe'en) is the first of three days where the dead walk among us in costume dressed as the living so as to not alarm the public to their presence.
You can see where this is going can't you? In later years, children would mimic the dead by dressing up in costume and go door to door performing for candy and dancing through the streets. In America, this got adopted from, "here, let me sing a song or dance for you in the hopes that you'll give me some candy" to "trick or treat" which basically means "if you don't give me some fucking candy, I'm gonna burn your goddamn house down you son of a bitch...please?" Kids would also go around with lanterns carved out of turnips as turnip carving was part of the tradition. Since turnips weren't as readily available as pumpkins in America, a native fruit, we decided to capitalize on the ending harvest season. So kids would carry around carved out pumpkins instead.
Now, there's a whole bunch of interesting facts I can slew, but I'll it at that for now. Also, I was supposed to put up a gallery of all the photos from set of Halloween shots I took with Courtney. Well, we only got around to doing a couple, but those ones are now up if you go to WriteLighting.com/Halloween. Or view them in the gallery below. We promise to do more later, they just won't be up in time for Halloween sadly.
