Halloween

verywhere in thiDallas town halloween 'spirit' is catching up. It is better not to walk on the streets in the dark to avoid frightening spectacles in front of the houses. It passes my conception the mixture of ghosts, candy , festival for the children- too confusing. I asked a few people here the significance but they threw up their hands.I could have asked our neighbbour, Tom,a friendly American, but he is too busy with his newly got puppies-all the time playing with them-rain or shine,not even doing his favourite pastime of gardening.So I decided to refer to history. It is basically started in Ireland. In old English the word conveys something like 'sanctify'. The Celtic people in those olden days observe October 31st the end of summer and starting of the cold,starvation,and death from the next day for another 6 months. The Celtic priests would go up the hill on 31st oct night,start sacrificial fire and offer crops andanimals and spend the whole night propiciating the dead and ghosts;bring the ember,distribute to the houses to stari new cooking fire and warmth.with Roman invasion similar fest to their thenatos was observed. with advent of christianity Nov 1st was celebrated as all saints day and the next day as homage to the departed souls. Over the years all of them got mixed up to one day ie 31st oct- halloween, hence the mix up of candy,ghost.pumpkin(crops) and so on.well! history gives you insight into the present customs,behavior and rites. Talking about ghost,heaven etc I must tell you about the cricket match in heaven.Vichu and Kichu are great friends. Being residents of Chennai they are great fans of cricket,bordering fenatic lovers of the game. they played and talked more about cricket. As you know chennaites are so crazy that they take pleasure in asking one another the score. The status oriented chennai vasi does'nt mind the interaction anybody and everybody when it comes to cricket. The chennai duo were getting old and became worried that one may survive the other. so they went to a soothsayer and acquired the knowledge thru 'medium' to communicate to heaven. short while later Vichu died. Kichu spoke to him the only topic of mutual interest-do you play cricket in heaven. Vichu replied " we do play daily and you will be interested to know that tomorrow's opening bowler is going to be YOU"