I'm throwing a Halloween party What tips do you have for throwing a great party?
Set the Mood - Decorate your yard and interior. Fake tombstones, zombie arms & heads coming out of your lawn, a large spider web & spider in your bushes, maybe even built your own Slenderman decoration standing 8–9 ft tall! If you have stairs or a hill, put dry ice or a fog machine at the top so the vapor rolls down the stairs/hill. Black lights work well too.Create a menu - Don’t just offer beer and chips. Make it creative beer, like bottles of Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale or Ballast Point’s Dead Ringer Oktoberfest Lager. Have black bean tortilla chips to dip into the salsa or cheese drip. Try coloring the cheese dip blood red. Make a punch for people to drink, and put the bucket it’s in inside of a larger bucket that has dry ice in it, so it’ll fog over. You MUST have candy for your guests to munch on too. Maybe make some cupcakes and ice them in orange, black, green, and purple.Sounds - Besides music inside, have a speaker outside playing creepy sounds. I’ve found that the ambient background music from games like Diablo 3 or WOW work pretty well for that.Costumes - Require costumes. I know that some people dislike wearing costumes, but those people suck. Maybe offer a prize for the best ones in certain categories. Work on your costume well in advance, so you don’t need to worry about it the day of the party. That’ll give you extra time to make sure everything else is ready. Keep in mind you want to be comfortable. If you’re going to be outside, consider that it might be 40–50 degrees and windy. Sucks to be in a Chippendale dancer outfit under those conditions. Also, beware of costumes with masks - you need to be able to drink w/o taking off the mask.
What is the history of Halloween?
Halloween, the 2nd most expensive festival in U.S. after Christmas is extremely popular amongst kids, where they get an opportunity to trick and treat.The fun and frolic element of Halloween is pretty new. It traces its route to the ancient Samhain festival celebrated in Ireland. Samhain is considered the time when the 'door' to the other world opens and dead communicates with the earthly beings. It also traces routes from All Hallow's Eve and All Saint's Day celebrated in many parts of the world.Basically the dead were remembered and many people believed that as the spirits could wander freely during the period, they can probably inhabit their houses. Thus, to scare them away, Irish people started placing the carved turnips outside their homes. This was their way to ward off the devil.Likewise, All Hallow's Eve and All Saint's Day also included pleasing the dead.However, as Irish migrated to U.S. which has Pumpkins in abundance, they started creating the jack o lanterns of Pumpkin.Initially, this festival had too many superstitions and many people still suffer fromSamhainophobia which is an irrational fear of Halloween.However, most of the superstitions are rooted out in this century and it has been transformed to a holiday where Halloween parties are arranged, strange costumes are worn and a lot of trick and treat is enjoyed by the kids. It might surprise you but the Candy makers love Halloween as its a $6 billion industry.
What is Halloween?
Harvest OriginsAround the world people celebrate harvest festivals that marks the arrival of a new crop and a new time of prosperity. Most agricultural societies had such a festival. For instance, North India celebrates Holi in March as the annual Wheat crop gets harvested in March. Tamil Nadu celebrates Thai Pongal in January righter after the Samba rice harvest in December. In case of Kerala, Onam festival is celebrated in August to mark their rice August after the monsoon.In most agricultural societies in Northern Hemisphere, late autumn is one of the prime harvest seasons and thus it is the time for major festivals. This is the last opportunity to celebrate before huge snowstorms cover up the ground in the month of January. Two such major autumn harvest festivals in the North America are Halloween and Thanksgiving - both with English agricultural roots. Halloween is the 31st October ever year and Thanksgiving is the last thursday of every November. HalloweenHalloween is a corruption of "holy evening". The Celts believed that it is the time the dead would revisit their homes. They would lit bonfires and ask for purity. After a few centuries, the belief in ghosts had gone away but people thought it was funny to dress up as one. Thus, from about 18th century people in Wales and other regions started dressing up as evil spirits and ghosts to make fun of the concept of bringing back the dead. To scare the dead, people also carry various lanterns such as the Jack-o'-lantern.Halloween in the present dayIt is the time people play with pumpkins. Everywhere around there are pumpkins. Adults dress up in various costumes - traditionally scary ones.Kids move to other people's homes and ask for "trick or treat". You either show them a trick or give them chocolates. Teens go and watch the scariest horror movies that will come on theatres.
What is your most memorable Halloween memory and why?
For me, it was without a doubt the Halloween Blizzard of 1991. It was such a big storm that it has its own Wikipedia page, and it isn't a short page...1991 Halloween blizzardThe peak amount of snowfall was measured at 37 inches (about 1 meter) in Duluth, MN, which was a few hours drive from my home. I guess we didn't get quite as much, but it must have been 2 feet of more where I lived. To anyone unfamiliar with heavy snowfalls, if you have 2 feet of average snowfall over an area, it means you can easily have snow drifts of over 5 or 6 feet. This is how you see pictures of cars and houses buried in snow.October is a cold month in Minnesota, but this was something exceptional. Kids were in costume trying to trick or treat, while climbing through huge drifts of snow. I remember my friend's father took his son, myself and my little brother over to the university dorms and we trick or treated inside. The college students were actually really into the whole thing, they were giving out lots of candy, many where in costume, and they decorated the hallways of their floors with strobe lights, streamers and other decorations to make the building festive and scary. It was very memorable.
What are some links to scary websites?
7,357,418,033That’s the world population when I started typing this.If you go to Population Clock you can see our population count rising.It freaks me out- maybe it’s unwarranted, but I think it’s a little scary.7,357,418,680So we got about 650 more human lives, in the time it takes me to type 3 lines (and I’m a pretty fast typer, too). The website accounts for births AND deaths, so it should be fairly accurate.I just had a quick conversation.7,357,419,770