Good morning everyone Happy Halloween! I am off and running around town today in my Original TOS Movie Tunic for Halloween here in Tucson  AZ! Sorry I don't Have a current picture but I no longer have a camera phone or smart phone will see if I can get someone to upload one from the Halloween party i am going too later on today!

I have been reading and running a King Arthur Pendragon Roleplaying Game for nearley two years now out of the Great Pendragon Campaign! Here is A few books I have read and would recommend are worth a look:

Pendragon or King Arthur Pendragon, is a Role playing game (RPG)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendragon_(role-playing_game)

Here is Greg Staffords Story of publishing Pendragon.
http://www.gspendragon.com/publicationhistory/publicationhistory.html

Grail Quest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grail_Quest

Warlord Chronicles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warlord_Chronicles

Hear Lies Arthur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Lies_Arthur

Saxon Stories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saxon_Stories

The Pendragon Cycle is a series of fantasy or semi historical books based on the Arthurian legend written by Steven R. Lawhead
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pendragon_Cycle

Books by Rosemary Sutcliff books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Sutcliff

Phyllis Ann Karr's books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Ann_Karr

Mary, Lady Stewart books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_(novelist) 

I will post more later on Cheers,

Day Of The Dead:

The Day of the Dead celebrations might seem to be very similar to Halloween. In both celebrations people dress up in costumes, there are a lot of skeletons everywhere, and there are special sweet treats and candies given out. Also people spend a lot of time in graveyards and death imagery is everywhere.
But there are some big differences between the holiday that promotes fear of the dead and the holiday that celebrates the dead. The Day of the Dead holiday is about celebrating the dead, not being afraid of the dead. It’s a holiday for people to honor their ancestors and loved ones who have passed away and invite those spirits back into their homes to be part of the family once more. It’s a celebration of family and a show of respect for those who have passed away.

Day of the Dead ANNA MARINE, ART PRINT

The practice of celebrating the dead goes back thousands of years in South American cultures. In the Aztec culture the celebration of the dead was in August and went on for a month. During that time the people paid tribute to Catrina, the Goddess of Death, who was portrayed as a skeleton. When the Catholic faith became entrenched in South America the festival of the dead was changed into the Day of the Dead and timed to coincide with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. November 1st and 2nd are national holidays in Mexico and other South American countries. During those days people welcome back the spirits of the family members that they have lost.

They pay their respects to their loved ones by tending to their graves, cleaning up graveyards, planting flowers and trees, and leaving offerings at the graves. They also wear the clothes of their deceased relatives, paint their faces as skulls or wear skeleton masks and costumes, and build altars in their homes to honor their loved ones.

Offerings of sweets, special bread, and the same foods and drinks that the family members loved in life will be placed on the altars along with marigolds to draw the spirits of the family members who have crossed over. Marigolds are said to attract spirits so they are visible everywhere during Day of the Dead celebrations.

One of the most well known ways that people celebrate the Day of the Dead is to turn themselves into skeletons using elaborate makeup and masks. The skeletal appearance highlighted with flowers, bright colors and artwork is a striking image that has now become an icon of the Day of the Dead. These looks are based partly on the decorated sugar skulls that are left on altars as offerings to the spirits and partly on a piece of artwork called La Calavera Catrina. It’s a zinc etching that was created at the turn of the 20th century and is a depiction of the Goddess of Death wearing a very fancy hat with lots of flowers. That image has inspired over a hundred years worth of stunning sugar skull makeup. 

Good morning every one! 

I have not made a post here sense September 15th I have been busy with other things that I am currently dealing with. But sense it is October and it is a time for farmers to harvest their crops ranchers to prepare their live stock for the winter, for Hunters to gather and get in their meat for the winter, I thought I would  re post the old series of articles I wrote back in 2007 for our very 1st Halloween Urland Spooktacular. I know what some will ask does that mean I am going and restarting the Urland Universe website again? the answer is NO! I am not going to restart the Urland Universe at this time, it was a fun time in my life and yes I do miss it but I have moved on with my life and this blog will have to serve as your entertainment for now. That does not mean I won't restart it later!

History of Halloween

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. The word Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows' Evening also known as Hallowe'en or All Hallows' Eve.

Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses" and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as of Australia and New Zealand.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"). The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.

The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween.

Masks and costumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.

Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery with the question, "Trick or treat?" The "trick" part of "trick or treat" is a threat to play a trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in preparation for trick-or-treaters.

The history of Halloween has evolved. The activity is popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and due to increased American cultural influence in recent years, imported through exposure to US television and other media, trick-or-treating has started to occur among children in many parts of Europe, and in the Saudi Aramco camps of Dhahran, Akaria compounds and Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. The most significant growth and resistance is in the United Kingdom, where the police have threatened to prosecute parents who allow their children to carry out the "trick" element. In continental Europe, where the commerce-driven importation of Halloween is seen with more skepticism, numerous destructive or illegal "tricks" and police warnings have further raised suspicion about this game and Halloween in general.

In Ohio, Iowa, and Massachusetts, the night designated for Trick-or-treating is often referred to as Beggars Night.

Part of the history of Halloween is Halloween costumes. The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages, and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of "souling," when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas."

Yet there is no evidence that souling was ever practiced in America, and trick-or-treating may have developed in America independent of any Irish or British antecedent. There is little primary Halloween history documentation of masking or costuming on Halloween in Ireland, the UK, or America before 1900. The earliest known reference to ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911, when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, near the border of upstate New York, reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go street guising (see below) on Halloween between 6 and 7 p.m., visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs. Another isolated reference appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but do not depict trick-or-treating. Ruth Edna Kelley, in her 1919 history of the holiday, The Book of Hallowe'en, makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America." It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term "trick or treat" appearing in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939. Thus, although a quarter million Scots-Irish immigrated to America between 1717 and 1770, the Irish Potato Famine brought almost a million immigrants in 1845-1849, and British and Irish immigration to America peaked in the 1880s, ritualized begging on Halloween was virtually unknown in America until generations later.

Trick-or-treating  spread from the western United States eastward, stalled by sugar rationing that began in April 1942 during World War II and did not end until June 1947. Early national attention to trick-or-treating was given in October 1947 issues of the children's magazines Jack and Jill and Children's Activities, and by Halloween episodes of the network radio programs The Baby Snooks Show in 1946 and The Jack Benny Show and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in 1948. The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon Trick or Treat, Ozzie and Harriet were besieged by trick-or-treaters on an episode of their television show, and UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating.

Trick-or-treating on the prairie. Although some popular histories of Halloween have characterized trick-or-treating as an adult invention to re-channel Halloween activities away from vandalism, nothing in the historical record supports this theory. To the contrary, adults, as reported in newspapers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, typically saw it as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to anger. Likewise, as portrayed on radio shows, children would have to explain what trick-or-treating was to puzzled adults, and not the other way around. Sometimes even the children protested: for Halloween 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner that read "American Boys Don't Beg."

That's what we said back years ago but now days most American boys do have to beg in order to keep food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads. Many families live a life of homelessness because no one in America cares about any one but them selves except for those few Christians who try to provide meals and clothes for the less fortunate.