HALLOWE'EN
This is the festival which is given over to all kinds of merry pranks and is dearly loved by the children. It is an opportunity to teach them to discriminate between the fun which is kindly and that which is malicious and productive of needless pain.
Ducking for Apples and Nuts (Large pans or tubs, apples, nuts, pennies)
Let the children, young and old, for once get themselves wet, if necessary, in ducking for the nuts and apples floating in the water. With a little suction some of the children will be able to get pennies from the bottom of the tub.
Fortune-Telling
1. With Needles. (Needles, pan of water)
Name a needle for yourself and one for a friend, and put in the water, but not together. If they move safely across, it betokens good luck. Two needles meeting indicate life partnership.
2. With Toy Ships. (Pan of water, nut ships as described on [page 22] )
Name one little vessel for yourself and one for a friend and set them afloat. If they come to port on the other side all is well.
3. With Apple Rinds. (Apple, knife)
Pare an apple so that the skin comes off in one long piece. Toss over the head upon the floor, and the form it takes will give the initial letters of the name of one's future mate.
4. With Cake. (Cake, thimble, ring, penny, etc.)
Bake a cake, hiding in the dough a thimble, a ring and a penny. When cut, the recipient of the ring is fore-doomed to marriage; the one getting the thimble will be a spinster; the one receiving the penny will have the pleasures and responsibilities of wealth.
Apple-Biting Contest (Apple suspended from a string)
1. The apple is set swinging and two people, standing opposite each other, try as it passes to seize and hold it in the mouth. They must not touch it with the hands.
2. Tie an apple by its stem to the middle of a string about a yard long. Then two people, each taking one end of the string in the mouth, begin, at a signal, to gather it as fast as possible into the mouth, and so to reach the apple. This belongs to the one reaching it first.
Refreshments
Apples, nuts, popcorn, cider, gingerbread and doughnuts are suitable for lighter refreshments. Baked beans and plain ice-cold rice pudding were once eaten with decided relish at a New York City Hallowe'en party, the city people evidently enjoying the contrast between this feast and the usual caterer's service. Serve fruit from a kettle suspended from three cross-sticks, a la witch.
Decorations
Jack-o'-lanterns of pumpkins; strings of apples, popcorn and cranberries, and toy brooms hung here and there, as reminders of the witches who are said to be abroad, will add to the occasion. The pumpkins should be cut to resemble skulls.
Reading
Have some one read "Tam O'Shanter's Mare" (Burns); also some good ghost story. Thomas Kendrick Bangs' "Ghosts Which I Have Met" contains some good stories, all absurd. Choose a good reader for this.
Place Cards
1. (White or tinted cards, Palmer Cox Brownies, ink, pen)
The Brownies are delightfully funny little people without a suggestion of anything coarse or evil. The children love them. Let the older ones copy and cut them out to use as invitation cards for the Hallowe'en party or for place cards.
2. (See "Pricking," [page 165].)
Since witches are always associated with the pricking of pins, this is an appropriate occasion for using the kindergarten pricking. Outline some of the Brownies on tinted cards and prick as directed on [page 165].
3. (See Pumpkin Jack-o'-lantern cards, [page 135].)