Happy Halloween.
Jessica has been reminiscing about childhood Halloween escapades in the midwest.
I, too, have vivid childhood memories of Halloween. I think I must have spent a lot of Halloweens visiting my cousins in Tralee, county Kerry. Tralee and Halloween are forever linked in my mind.
My aunt would always bake the traditional Halloween cake. It’s called a Barn Breac(sp?). It was filled with various items of symbolic importance: if you got the penny, you’d be rich; if you got the rag, you’d be poor. I seem to remember a pea and a stick too, but I can’t recall their significance.
We played lots of Halloween games, most of which involved apples in some way. There was bobbing for apples, of course. There was also the one where you had to try to eat an apple suspended on a piece of string, with you hands tied behind your back.
Earlier this year, when Jessica and I were back in Ireland, we met up with my aunt and uncle from Tralee. The conversation came ‘round to those childhood Halloween games. They also have many fond memories and they told me something that really warmed my heart:
They still have the nail sticking out of the doorframe where we used to hang the apples.
Even when they were renovating the house, they couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of that nail.
Fond memories, indeed.
Happy Halloween.
I’m going upstairs now to have pumpkin soup with Chris and Karin. Maybe we’ll even play some games.