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Art: "Next Time, Choose 'Treat'..."
Monday, 30 October 2006 10:38 amThis picture was done for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aubrem’s Snape Halloween postcard exchange. If it lacks originality, please be indulgent: we don’t celebrate Halloween in these parts, so I had to improvise :D.
Halloween is a strange thing, at least from my point of view. I can’t believe my eyes and ears (forgive me! I’m an ignorant Continental!) when I look around LJ and find that even adults dress up in strange costumes on the occasion of some weird old festival – I can’t imagine anything of the sort here, where even carnival is a rather subdued affair in most cities (though we have several notable exceptions). All we get to see of Halloween is the bland, commercial aspect, the filler between “Back to School” and “Sinterklaas” in the shop windows, the meaningless mass of pumpkins, witch hats, bats and badly painted pictures of vampires. The shops just try to sell us loads of stuff that has no root in our local culture, and makes Halloween look like some sort of party for bored children. It is a rather recent phenomenon too: until ten years ago, there wasn’t a pumpkin in sight around this time of year, except in the gardens of some people who grew their own.
Funny enough, we do have a few related traditions. When as a child I lived in the country, the stretch of field on the other side of the road was sometimes used for the growing of beets – they were, I suppose, food for the cows when they couldn’t graze in winter. I distinctly remember a friend of mine once hollowing out one of those beets to make a jack-o’-lantern, and I do think the practice was more widespread when my parents were children. Our own (gentler) version of Trick or Treat occurs on Twelfth Night, when children dress up as the Three Kings from the bible who went looking for the infant Jesus. They go from door to door and sing carols, expecting to be rewarded for their efforts with sweets or coins. I did that a lot as a child, and loved it – my mum used to go with us when my sister and I were little, and had assorted costumes made for us all out of old drapery. The only drawback of her presence was that she made us refuse sweets and coins and told us to ask for fruit instead (yech! Healthy!) :D… Obviously we changed that rule when we went carolling with friends later on ;P. I’m not sure how prominent the tradition of Twelfth Night still is today. Since I moved to the city, I have certainly never seen it anymore.
But, enough maundering – I promised you art…
( Halloween Snape )
Happy Halloween, all!
aubrem’s Snape Halloween postcard exchange. If it lacks originality, please be indulgent: we don’t celebrate Halloween in these parts, so I had to improvise :D.Halloween is a strange thing, at least from my point of view. I can’t believe my eyes and ears (forgive me! I’m an ignorant Continental!) when I look around LJ and find that even adults dress up in strange costumes on the occasion of some weird old festival – I can’t imagine anything of the sort here, where even carnival is a rather subdued affair in most cities (though we have several notable exceptions). All we get to see of Halloween is the bland, commercial aspect, the filler between “Back to School” and “Sinterklaas” in the shop windows, the meaningless mass of pumpkins, witch hats, bats and badly painted pictures of vampires. The shops just try to sell us loads of stuff that has no root in our local culture, and makes Halloween look like some sort of party for bored children. It is a rather recent phenomenon too: until ten years ago, there wasn’t a pumpkin in sight around this time of year, except in the gardens of some people who grew their own.
Funny enough, we do have a few related traditions. When as a child I lived in the country, the stretch of field on the other side of the road was sometimes used for the growing of beets – they were, I suppose, food for the cows when they couldn’t graze in winter. I distinctly remember a friend of mine once hollowing out one of those beets to make a jack-o’-lantern, and I do think the practice was more widespread when my parents were children. Our own (gentler) version of Trick or Treat occurs on Twelfth Night, when children dress up as the Three Kings from the bible who went looking for the infant Jesus. They go from door to door and sing carols, expecting to be rewarded for their efforts with sweets or coins. I did that a lot as a child, and loved it – my mum used to go with us when my sister and I were little, and had assorted costumes made for us all out of old drapery. The only drawback of her presence was that she made us refuse sweets and coins and told us to ask for fruit instead (yech! Healthy!) :D… Obviously we changed that rule when we went carolling with friends later on ;P. I’m not sure how prominent the tradition of Twelfth Night still is today. Since I moved to the city, I have certainly never seen it anymore.
But, enough maundering – I promised you art…
( Halloween Snape )
Happy Halloween, all!
