According to the Celtic wheel of the year, Halloween is when everything starts to wind down. Trees start dying, nights get longer, and (apparently) the veil between this world and the next one gets thinner. Even though we don’t really celebrate Halloween where we’re from, here are some great frugal ways to get your holiday fun in while you still can!
One big tradition that many people celebrate is trick-or-treating. Marked with copious amounts of shop-bought candy, many people see Halloween as a dangerous tradition — for unsupervised children, for dieters, and for savers. Why not try making your own candy this year? Caramel apples are crispy, gooey, and sweet all in one, and they somehow count as one of your five a day! (Removing the heavy cream will make the recipe vegan, if a little more crunchy.) Why not combine activities with apple bobbing beforehand, so everyone gets to caramel coat their own hard-won apple? If caramel isn’t your style, you could also drizzle melted chocolate and stud with almonds, marshmallows, or popping candy, too!
Once everyone has a delicious caramel apple, why not settle around to tell ghost stories? AskReddit has a huge backlog of personal paranormal anecdotes — just sort by best > all time to get the spookiest ones. There’s an enormous collated collection here, which I like to read late at night just to spook myself. Be careful, these are particularly creepy! If you’ve got little ones around and don’t want to be dealing with nightmares, YouTube has a host of old direct-to-DVD Halloween movies, like my My Scary Godmother or Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School (a personal favourite!).
Or maybe you’re a bit too grown up for Halloween — that’s fair! The pagan celebration of Halloween was known as samhain (pronounced ‘sa-wen’), and was meant to be a time of transcience as the world got ready for the long winter ahead. Many people like to mark that time of year by taking a walk in nature and observing their place in the natural world, reflecting on the changing season and the events of the past year. It’s meant to be a time of celebrating life in the face of death, so go forth and congratulate yourself for making it this far!
Photo by Ryan Bruce from Burst.
