Happy Halloween

Honestly, it's a bad idea to buy the kind of Halloween candy that YOU like to eat. I have a bowl of Almond Joy's (me) and Hershey bars (John) ready for trick-or-treat tomorrow. Since Halloween is on Saturday night, hopefully lots of parents will take their kids out and the candy will be history. From all the pumpkins and decorated houses, it seems many young families live nearby, although you seldom see children playing outside anymore.

There's something reflective about autumn, and I've been thinking about when we lived in England, and Amanda was exactly the age baby Nova is now. Our country has Americanized the world, so maybe the British celebrate Halloween now, but back then they didn't. I remember our English friends trying to explain a bizarre November "holiday" called Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, when kids asked for pennies and hanged effigies were burned. There is a complicated history behind it, but I plucked this little fact out of Wiki:

In 18th-century England, it became a tradition for children to display a grotesque effigy of Fawkes, termed a "guy", as part of the Bonfire Night celebration. As part of the tradition, they would often stand on street corners begging for "a penny for the guy". The "guy" would be burned on a bonfire at the end of the evening. As a consequence, "guy" came to mean a man of odd appearance. Subsequently, in American English, "guy" lost any pejorative connotation, becoming a simple reference for any man.

So this is how Americans came by the word "guy," and made it one of the most overused words in the English language! Now Guy Fawkes Night in England boils down to an excuse for young people to party and look for mischief. Just like our Halloween. Have fun this weekend and watch out for "guys" and spooks!