Did you know…
1. Halloween is the second highest grossing commercial holiday in the U.S. next to Christmas? True. A full 25% of all money spent on candy for the year is shelled out for this one night! BTW, the most popular candy for a Halloween treat: Snickers bar. I must have been hitting the wrong neighborhoods. All I remember finding in my bucket was apples, single sticks of gum and those funky “circus peanuts” you would only see at Halloween. Most likely, Dad was sneaking all my chocolate.
2. Most expensive Halloween costume for sale online: A Vampire costume so advance it apparently warrants a $2,000 tag. Somebody is taking this holiday a little too seriously. I once wore one of those jack-o-lantern shaped trick-or-treat buckets over my head and an old blanket around my shoulders. Total cost = $3…and my dignity.
Find out what's happening in South Windsorfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
3. An estimated 25 million-plus pumpkins are carved in the U.S. alone each Halloween. One can only hope all those extraneous “pumpkin innards” are being skillfully rendered into delicious pies.
4. Famed illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini died on Halloween, in 1926. This fact birthed the legend that it may be possible to speak to the “ghost” or spirit of Houdini. Uh…I got nothin.
Find out what's happening in South Windsorfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
5. Halloween serves as an annual reminder of our curiosity regarding death. Whether considering the ancient Gaelic Samhain or the later Christian tradition of All Saints Day as origins for Halloween, both involve some element of death, life after death and the destiny of our souls. This fascination shows up in every culture around the globe since the beginning of time. And now we live in a society that invests prodigious resources in trying to avoid death, prolonging life. Yet, everyone dies. We can’t seem to accept that reality. We fight it until our last breath. Why?
Maybe this line from the Bible offers a clue: “[God] has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Maybe we were created with this notion of everlasting life embedded into our beings. Maybe we innately recognize we were meant for something more than what this life has to offer. Maybe we’re right.
