"Trick or Treat" came early this year.

Perhaps I should clarify. While Saturday, October 29 was the designated day for many children's Hallowe'en-themed activities — including costume contests, mall Trick-or-Treats, and the costumed American Diabetes Association Step Out to STOP Diabetes Walk, Mother Nature had other plans for us — plans that included snow shovels, flashlights, streets full of wet, slushy, ice-snow, and not a microwatt of electric power to be had for three towns' radius around us.

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Hallowe'en is a time of transformations.

In the ancient Celtic traditions (and the modern Wiccan ones), Samhain is the time at which the Goddess — old, and lonely, and missing her lover — goes to the Summerland to be with him. With her goes light and warmth, fertility, and life. The Samhain Sabbat denotes the end of summer/fall and the beginning of the winter seasons, a time when the last harvest has come in and when the herds are pared down to what the community can feed through the winter, and what will be able to reproduce in the spring.

It is a time of plenty, preceding a known time of famine.

It is also the start of the new year.

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There's something to be said about Hallowe'en candy, and that is, that of it which I remember was largely crap.

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Quick, top five Halloween candies.

Fine, I'll go first.

5. Baby Ruth
4. Whatchamacallit
3. Twix
2. Kit-Kat
1. Reeses Peanut Butter Cup

And just stop it Cadbury or Mars Inc. or any other bogus chocolate maker trying to come out with your own peanut butter and chocolate treat. Stop it! You're embarrassing yourself. None of you come even remotely close to the brilliance of the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup formula. When the kids get such wannabe candy dropped in their Halloween bags, I instruct them to throw it back from whence it came, like a home run ball to center field from the opposing team. (READ MORE)

Happy Halloween! I suspect it is only in the USA that Halloween has taken on such huge proportions. It's the number two holiday for decoration sales. There are probably a lot of interesting psychological reasons why Americans are drawn to a holiday all about appearing to be someone else; but that's a post for a different forum.

As a person with type 2 diabetes, I really dislike the candy aspect of the celebration. In all honesty, I really LIKE the candy aspect, but dislike having to try and restrain myself. It didn't used to be ALL candy. Remember apples? But then the urban myth of the razor blade in the apple started and that was the end of apples for trick or treat.

Remember "Trick or Treat for UNICEF"? I haven't see that for several years. (READ MORE)