HALLOWE’EN
“Grandma, tomorrow night is Hallowe’en,” said Pink one evening when she and Alice and Bobby had drawn their stools close to Grandma’s knee for their usual good-night story.
“Mother makes candy on Hallowe’en,” Alice added, “and we have nuts and apples and false faces and witches on broomsticks and black cats and everything.”
“And last year we had a party,” said Pink.
“And this year,” put in Bobby eagerly, “we’re going to have a great, big pumpkin to make a jack-o’-lantern of. I know how to do it. Daddy told me, and he’s going to help. You hollow out the insides of the pumpkin and cut round holes for the eyes and make a nose and a mouth with teeth and put a candle inside, and I’ll say he’ll look scary.”
“Won’t he though!” exclaimed Grandma. “To meet a jack-o’-lantern like that on a dark night would make a body shiver. I just know it would. Brother Charlie and I used to save the biggest pumpkins for Hallowe’en. In the summer we would pick out certain pumpkin vines in the cornfield and take special care of them so that the pumpkins would grow extra large for jack-o’-lanterns. We would keep the dirt loosened around the roots, and when the weather was dry we would carry water from the creek to water them. We would watch to keep the worms and bugs off the vines, and then when the pumpkins began to get big we’d measure around them every few days to see which was growing the fastest. Father said we did everything but sleep with the pumpkins.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Pink in surprise, “did you have Hallowe’en, too, Grandma?”
“Yes, indeed,” answered Grandma, “but we generally called it Hallow Eve in those days.”
And she went on to tell them how the evening of October thirty-first has for years and years in many different countries been celebrated as the eve of All-hallows or All Saints’ Day and is called Halloweven or, as we most often say, Hallowe’en, and how on this particular evening fairies, witches, and imps are supposed to be especially active.