Halloween, perhaps our weirdest annual celebration, is even stranger than it seems. Unlike the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, it is neither patriotic nor historical, yet it is celebrated nationally. Unlike Christmas, Easter or Passover, Halloween is not associated with a particular religion. Yet it weaves spirituality, death and religious beliefs into our present and historical imaginations.

Halloween is hugely popular, infused with its own set of immediately recognizable symbols, rituals and stories. Yet most Americans have little, if any, sense of the hidden meanings and motives of the event in which they so enthusiastically participate.

Even its origin is complex and uncertain. Many Americans have heard rumblings that Halloween is a "pagan" or pre-European-Christian holiday with roots in Celtic traditions. A common and slightly elaborated version of this notion holds that Halloween is a descendent of the Celtic Samhain festival, which, on November 1, marked both the Celtic New Year and the day during which dead souls were believed to revisit Earth.

But the name "Halloween" has distinctly Christian origins. In efforts to stop seemingly non-Christian celebrations, the Roman Catholic Church incorporated Samhain festivities into the Christian calendar.

In 731 A.D., November 1 was declared All Saints' Day (All Hallows Day). October 31 thus became All Hallows Eve, in time shortened to "Halloween." Even with the encouragement of activities such as masquerading pageants of saints and the further, complicating step of adding Nov. 2 as All Souls Day to the church calendar after the year 1000, some "non-Christian" elements survive in Halloween.

Some elements, however, have a distinctively Native American heritage. One key symbol-the pumpkin-was unknown to Europeans before Columbus. But it was part of the sacred trinity of native American foods: squash, beans and maize, which appears in the form of candy corn and the corn shocks that decorate front porches. The original European version of the jack-o'-lantern was a turnip.

Some students of the holiday maintain that trick-or-treating is linked to Irish Samhain traditions and thus became popular about the time that the Irish began immigrating to the United States in large numbers. Presumably during Samhain, people opened their doors and provided food to the wandering dead, so people eventually started dressing like wandering dead souls and demanding food.

Others suspect that the custom was introduced to replace, or at least mitigate, the pranks or even destruction that typically accompanied the holiday even in the most conservative rural communities.

In Hoxie, a town of 1,500 in northwest Kansas, senior community members recall that, in the old days, "a certain number of outhouses became horizontal," when loose items such as garden hoses, trash cans and lawn furniture were dragged onto Main Street to block traffic the next morning.

However, trick-or-treating may be a relatively recent phenomenon coinciding with population shifts from rural to urban and suburban environments. It is, after all, difficult to go door to door when the doors are miles apart. Despite popular laments that Halloween is no longer the holiday "it always has been," folklorist Tad Tuleja argues that trick-or-treating may have developed during the 1930s as a means to control young people's Halloween night pranks.

Finally, many students of folklore see in Halloween a connection to England's Guy Fawkes Day, the Nov. 5 commemoration of a foiled attempt to blow up the king and Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Guy Fawkes Day features bonfires, children soliciting "a penny for the guy" and pranking.

Halloween also may be related to early American harvest festivals, with apple bobbing, hayrides, and many local variations of games to divine the identity of a future mate. Those games probably derive from traditional beliefs in Britain and Ireland that spirits loosed on Halloween made the day particularly good for augury.

Connections to death, disorder, endings and to what Western traditions take to be the separate and set-apart world of the spirits all are consistent elements in tales about Halloween's origin.

Cultural anthropologists, who study the forms and meanings of human culture, have found that among the most intriguing meanings of Halloween are those listed below, each of them a window into the cultural and social dynamics of the country.

Dark Harvest

The first two categories tap deep, irresolvable, pan-human dilemmas. Ways of dealing with and symbolizing death and evil are represented in some of the earliest archaeological remains of human ritual activity. One traditional means of facing the reality of death is to view it as a transition and to continue a relationship with the dead.

Hence the various rituals for keeping the departed involved in the present world through seances, graveside visits, prayer or other communication. Ideas about an afterlife or notions of ghosts and vampires also can be understood as attempts to challenge the finality and fear surrounding human mortality.

Ritual Reversals

Cultures have ways to challenge death but have a hard time beating it. Likewise, no culture has eliminated misfortune and evil, though humans keep trying. Typical American methods are control and avoidance-locking up, shutting out, buckling up, watching out, staying away.

Yet on Halloween, scary things suddenly are embraced wholeheartedly, brought to front porches and displayed. And children, those innocents whom we most want to protect from death and danger, are an integral part of the annual ritual.

At Halloween, Americans are doing something that all human beings do—confronting the unknown with special symbols and rituals.

For a while, we pull these fearful and painful realities into a relatively contained and public context. We share them with our children. We create a special and safe moment during which danger and death, skeletons and strangers can safely be part of our experience. Then we lock our doors again and return to our everyday, safe American lives. Halloween reverses the usual order of many things in many ways.

Anthropologists have analyzed rituals of reversal in settings around the world. Days when the living walk around as if dead, and the dead are thought to walk around as if living, are not that unusual. In fact, Halloween can be seen as the American inversion ritual par excellence.

During rituals of inversion, people can violate otherwise solid social codes. Less powerful people can break the rules, reverse the order of expected actions, flaunt otherwise unacceptable ways of dress or behavior or reverse the usual roles of parent-child, boss-worker, male-female.

Thus, it is common to see groups of children "threatening" adults for candy. Everyday people don masks of the famous. Adults dress like children and children like adults. Pranks and mockery ordinarily not allowed become commonplace.

In the past, many anthropologists focused on the conservative functions of rituals, considering the reversals a sort of social pressure-release valve. In this view, the Halloween ritual means something like:

"Let the children eat as much candy as they want, let the poor be rich, let the dead walk the Earth, let us get scared out of our wits and let us make fun of those we usually must respect. Afterward, we'll be better able to cope with, and settle for, our usual lives."

Celebrating youngsters create their own pumpkin patch. (The Post)

More recently, anthropologists have shown that maintaining the status quo is not the only result of rituals of reversal. The rituals can actually reshape the usual order of things.

For instance, the gay community has actively used the holiday to assert a new and more visible social presence and power. The fantasy elements of masquerade, which temporarily permit one to be virtually whomever he or she wants to be, can foster true personal liberation and change. Playing a Halloween prank on a too-serious boss may change the tone of the office after the holiday.

The ritual reversals of Halloween also have potential power for children, serving as an opportunity to go to the door of the spooky house, visit a graveyard or visit the otherwise not-too-friendly neighbor.

Nevertheless, Halloween is still profoundly about sociability and norms. Reversals must fall within socially prescribed boundaries. Pranks and jokes are not supposed to cause permanent harm. Children are expected to say thank you at the door. Halloween can reinforce neighborliness and pro-social behavior.

Horror Stories

The symbols and rituals of Halloween link disorder and danger with cultural ideas about order and safety. But chaos still lurks, in reality or, much more often, in durable legends.

Virtually everyone has heard at least one story about poison or razor blades in apples, hypodermics in candy or dangerous items in grab bags. Each year, these stories are revived, and precautions are taken. Some call for an end to trick-or-treating, many parents allow children to visit only homes of people they know and many hospitals provide free candy X-ray service. Every year, new horror stories emerge, and old ones are retold.

Many social analysts have reasoned that these stories, while often thought true, are really examples of "urban legends" in the making, much the same as accounts of giant alligators in city sewers or rodents in soft-drink bottles. Horrible Halloween incidents occur occasionally. But how many people have firsthand evidence of someone hurt by Halloween candy? Seen in context, our fears about dangerous treats often seem more like ritual retellings than strictly rational worries.

Shopping malls and many schools now offer a "safe" alternative to neighborhood trick-or-treating so children will not be exposed to presumed danger. Local customs have changed accordingly. A resident of Severn, Md., says that "no one hands out any homemade items or home-filled treat bags, knowing that, when the children get home, their parents will" trash those items.

Strictly speaking, however, one should have no more reason to trust mall shopkeepers, whom the family does not know personally, than to mistrust people a few blocks away in another neighborhood. But the warnings and annual repetition of horror stories are expressions of society's profound belief that the world is a scary place for children, who need protection, especially from individual, unaffiliated strangers.

The Market for Fright

As a result, tension often is genuine between the trick-or-treat tradition and increasingly mobile, unstable neighborhoods with perceived "stranger danger." The marketplace has jumped to deal with such fears by minimizing the unknown.

For example, every Burger King restaurant looks alike and every "treat" dispensed there is exactly what parents expect. So a Burger King executive told a food-industry trade magazine last year that "increasingly, it is more of a challenge for parents to provide a controlled, safe, fun experience. And taking kids to Burger King to get a Halloween-themed toy is . . . a safe alternative for kids."

Recently, retailers have offered worried parents free bagels in Pittsburgh, 99-cent "monster eyes" with purchase of a Taco Bell meal and glow-in-the-dark treat buckets from Jack in the Box. All are part of what makes Halloween a $2.5 billion bonanza for retailers.

Moreover, this is part of a larger message. Through Halloween safety reminders and sponsored activities, children are taught that schools, hospitals, organizations and retail establishments have their interests at heart while individuals in homes do not.

What effect such beliefs might have on American culture remain to be seen. But they accord nicely with one of the two major contemporary shifts in American Halloween celebration. One is a transformation of the homemade neighborhood character of the event to one framed by institutions, corporations and consumer culture.

Because both adults and children participate and because the event involves decorations, candy, costumes and many other consumer products, Halloween is a marketer's dream, reported to be the fastest-growing retail season. Market researchers say 78 percent of households distributed treats in 1996. Halloween ranks as the leading holiday for U.S. candy sales, ahead of Christmas for the $20 billion annual U.S. confection industry.

Tita Rutledge, owner of a Baltimore costume shop, says the two weeks surrounding Halloween generate one-third of her store's total annual income. House and party decorations sell briskly nationwide. Holiday packaging, on cereal, for instance, and product tie-ins from costumes to coupons increase every year. "Slasher" movies light up the marquees; mock haunted houses for neighborhood fun or organizational profit pop up from coast to coast.

Adults

The second major trend in U.S. Halloween customs is an increasing tendency to regard the holiday as one also for adults. Halloween has joined New Year's Eve and Super Bowl Sunday as the most popular party dates for American adults. As one shop owner summed up the situation: "Halloween is becoming more of an adult holiday. Parents don't want their kids out trick-or-treating, so they have more time for themselves."

Anthropologists expect customs and cultural traditions to change over time. Baltimore provides an interesting nearby example of the way Halloween seems to be melding with other, primarily adult, events.

One is the Maryland Renaissance Festival, now in its 22nd consecutive year. The festival, which occurs on weekends for two months preceding Halloween, encourages costuming, and some buying and renting by adults is done for the festival. Another such event is a local novelty, the Halloween wedding.

Rutledge describes outfits she made for a Halloween wedding last year. The bride wore a red velvet dress a la Queen Isabella of Spain, and the groom wore matching doublet and tights. The father of the bride was festooned in a blue velvet tunic, tights and boots. The bride's mother appeared in a yellow underdress with blue brocade top. The noble nature of the costume choices made a good fit for a wedding, where high style and ceremonial dress are already the rule.

A manager at Baltimore's A&M Costume Gallery also cites increased Halloween wedding business, though she describes the typical mode as bride and groom dressed in conventional white while guests are costumed for Halloween.

Rutledge also describes a Cinderella Halloween wedding featuring glass slippers and gold painted pumpkins.

Over time, will such intermingling and merging of celebrations result in new Halloween stories? Will researchers soon examine evidence and imagine that Halloween was the Celtic time for marriages? Will we see a direct connection between "who-will-I-marry?" divination games once popular as a Halloween activity and Halloween wedding parties?

New forms of Halloween seem to be burgeoning, particularly in urban areas where anthropologists often seek rapid cultural change.

Halloween is a continually fascinating aspect of the constantly changing social world and of human's seemingly boundless capacity to invent traditions, confront danger and death in novel ways and remake symbols to fit new realities.

Wow I didnt know that did you lol

Well it’s Sunday and we have put the clocks back one hour ,it seems strange but when winter does arrive it’s as though I should be a little like some of our animal friends I feel as though I should hibernate sounds crazy doesn't it but it’s true I feel sluggish in the winter months a little more tired and I may even be a little more grumpy than usual if that's possible  lol.

well as you may have noticed from my profile I am interested in the chakras some say a load of nonsense some say it’s a piece of our body that has not been made important as it should have been I have gained a interest in it partly for health reasons somebody said to me why don't you try alternative medicines like spiritual healing so that's just about it that's what i am doing if it helps good if not I have had a interesting read, and today I am thinking of my Throat chakra which is the fifth chakra This is about taking responsibility for everything in life to take in and digest information its about how you see your life and fulfilment.I feel I need to look back at my life as well as forward and try to improve my mind as I have got into a rut with work and my health so this may help and as the colour blue is associated with the chakra in mention here, .

When I get into work on Monday I'm going to set myself a task and think positive I'm going to try to understand the changes at work in a positive way maybe it has just been me not agreeing with the changes so that's my task on Monday  ill be thinking of the colour Red for my Base Chakra this helps keep me grounded and enjoy my day to day life something some days have been missing of late.

on another note isn't the weather getting strange today we are in the end of October and the sun is shining here in Manchester UK  as a norm it would be very cold by now and even some ice in the mornings I'm not complaining as it suits me down to the ground but should we feel worried because what's going to happen in fifty years time will we , walking round in shorts and tea shirts at xmas when normally we would be expecting snow for the slay rides ,ill not be here but my grandkids will be saying the order generation only thought of themselves not a care for us wars and inflation and greedy bankers that's what they will be saying I guess, and I'm sorry to say it will be true as we have not done to much to be proud of in this old world as yet, have we.

Well we can all try to change that but i think its now up to the younger ones coming up in the world to do the bog changes lets hope for their sakes they get cracking soon.

Well how did you do LOL even I got that one right lol

*Heres another one. This one can be a little harder than you will first think

Sheila and I went looking at cars today as The new management seem to think they don't need  full time drivers at our place so I'm looking into the future  and as we take the vans home we will be stuck without them . as they have been cutting down on the work we do ,not to make it easy for us they made a big mistake earlier on in the year making to many people redundant and as they cant replace them in the same job without getting into bother they use the drivers as they have always helped out in this department so you see they can get away with this without to much bother and they will do this rather than admit they got it wrong like most other things they have up to now.

I think everyone has noticed that if you have been with this company for over ten years they seem to want to get rid of them for some reason all I know is that this company must have got it right as it started with a couple of people and has grown into the biggest and the world leaders but they think they can do better than the old management ,they have not been running the place properly the new management seem to think, that's why its the best in the world and that's a fact not my words or should I have said it was the best as it will not be much longer it will not even be in the UK much longer due to the greed of the new owners wanting to make even more money than they already do yes I  know it is a business and that's what i should do but surely a little tact would be in order i mean it was  a small seed planted here and has grown into this world leader name here and has given lots of work for the people of Salford.

But now we are being given the heave ho sooner than later I think not a thought for anyone some think they are going to be better off they have been brain washed they will find out sooner rather than later, I sound bitter I here yes I am i have worked hard at this place and it saddens me to see it going down hill it may still be making money and may even make more but its a sad place now to what it was The only way I can describe this is the workers would take work home with them in their heads i mean to make a improvement they didn't have to they wanted to help the company they enjoyed going to work we were all on a good rate of pay we have gone down that rate every year for a while now people go for the wages because they have to work not because they like the place.

Sad we will see what happens nexed  i guess that's a guarantee

Well after looking around the news I think one of the most important pieces are  that America has a President that has won a Noble Peace prize so I thought that was something to add today to my Blog

Well here’s hoping that we can get what we want its getting near the end of the year so lets hope that The new American President can do some good with his new  Noble Peace prize

as we all look up to America for help and if it wasn’t for America helping most troubled Countries the World would be in a far worse condition than it is today.

We all have our bully tactics in every Countries and America is no exception along with the UK who normally stand side by side in all things I personally don't know enough about President Obama to say if he deserved this prize lets just hope that he knuckle downs to the task ahead of him he has certainly been dropped in his job at the deep end so it’s going to be a task and a half for him

A snippet from here and a snippet from there

US President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Committee said he won it for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".

The committee highlighted Mr Obama's efforts to support international bodies and promote nuclear disarmament.

Mr Obama - woken up with the news early on Friday - said in an address at the White House that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" by the award.

He said he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of some of the "transformative figures" who had previously received the award.

Speaking outside the White House, he said he would accept the prize as a "call to action".

There were a record 205 nominations for this year's peace prize. Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Chinese dissident Hu Jia had been among the favourites.

Instead the committee chose Mr Obama, who was inaugurated less than two weeks before the 1 February nomination deadline.

There was widespread surprise at the committee's decision. While world leaders were largely supportive of the award, thousands of people have contacted the BBC with more sceptical views.

An estimated 75% of comment sent to the BBC expressed surprise at the award. Some said awarding the prize to Mr Obama was plain wrong, others that the decision had come too soon, before he had made any concrete foreign policy achievement.

October 11, 2002

Jimmy Carter wins Nobel Prize

On this day in 2002, former President Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, served one term as U.S. president between 1977 and 1981. One of his key achievements as president was mediating the peace talks between Israel and Egypt in 1978. The Nobel Committee had wanted to give Carter (1924- ) the prize that year for his efforts, along with Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin, but was prevented from doing so by a technicality--he had not been nominated by the official deadline.

After he left office, Carter and his wife Rosalynn created the Atlanta-based Carter Center in 1982 to advance human rights and alleviate human suffering. Since 1984, they have worked with Habitat for Humanity to build homes and raise awareness of homelessness. Among his many accomplishments, Carter has helped to fight disease and improve economic growth in developing nations and has served as an observer at numerous political elections around the world.

The first Nobel Prizes--awards established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) in his will--were handed out in Sweden in 1901 in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The Nobel Prize in economics was first awarded in 1969. Carter was the third U.S. president to receive the award, worth $1 million, following Theodore Roosevelt (1906) and Woodrow Wilson (1919).

I hope you enjoyed my Snippet from here and from there

Strange things that are happening to me today while I was out with Sheila I kept going a little dizzy holding on to the shopping trolley just in case but all was well ,I get the feeling my neck has something to do with this as when my neck aches I sometimes go a little light headed I have been told I have spondelitus but I wasn't told that anything would happen due to having this only my neck would go stiff on the odd okation and as that's why I went to the doctors in the first place I think I had already found that out for myself. my neck is going back to how it was a few months ago I could only move to the right a little and that was with pain and it cracks quite a lot when I move it  lol falling to bits.

when I got home I started to feel a little hungry and after I had ate I started getting hot and my face went a little red that  happens quite often but the last couple of months it hasn't done this so maybe all are linked I have told my doctor this and I had blood tests so no I don't have diabetes.so that's not why I go hot on and off in the day I went to my doctors last wk with headaches that are going worse I get a really bad pain on the top left of my head it comes very quick but if I stand very still it will go within a couple of mins if I move to early it comes on bad again so I know now to stand still and let it pass I'm going to the hospital in twelve wks for a check up to see what is causing it but as its a long time off that tells me its nothing serious otherwise they would have seen me sooner,

I snapped at the doctor last wk when I went a I feel as though they are just not bothering doing anything as they said it could be the crash I had had the jolt could have made the pain I did have this prob before but it has gone worse since the crash that's true  and after I calmed down the doctor said I'm sending you to the Neuroscience hospital to get you checked out I felt rather silly after my outburst but I have been snapping for a while so maybe it is all linked .The Doctor said we will have to have a rethink with all my probs and see if we cant get something going to fix them their going to be busy I have lots of things going on  lol but all have been seen on x-ray or scans and the camera inside me so at least they know what they are dealing with I have three things that I would like to get fixed and I have had them all now for years . so here's hoping isn't it funny when you have a moan you feel a bit better  lol but i guess you now feel ill listening to me moaning  lol

THATS LIFE

Top 50: greatest ever French cars - Photos - Features - MSN Cars - MSN UK
We look at some truly classic French cars that have come from across the Channel...

I love the American cars old and new and was wondering has anyone got a good site for me that has the cars from way back up to todays  pictures and maybe and  the speck would be nice anyone have any ideas thanks for your time  I love the steam trains to so maybe a good site of the American steam days to   hope you enjoy these pictures from back in time a little ways French cars here .

Has anyone been having any probs with  Image shack as a lot of my pictures will not show some are on my blog you may have noticed the peace one has gone and the one that allows you to changer the language from english to whatever has gone and when i tried to re do them some had gone from my account to  .anyone else had any probs I wonder.

Does anyone remember the rubix cube game well you can download it from my share site and put it on your desktop and play it when you fancy. link here .      Please click here for download