Fun Friday: Happy Halloween!

Hope you all have a fantastic Halloween weekend!  Whether you’re partying it up, going out or staying in, make sure to have fun and play it safe!  We’ll be back come Monday.

Movie Magic Monday: Hocus Pocus

Since it’s the week before Halloween, I thought I’d do a nice, definitive Halloween movie for you this week, and the first one that popped to mind was Hocus Pocus.

This movie starts out in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s, where three witch sisters are luring a little girl into their home to drain the lifeforce out of her.  Her brother tries to stop them, but instead he’s forced to watch as she dies, and then when he angrily insults the witches, he’s turned into a talking cat and made to live forever—which is a little ridiculous, sure, but I never said this was great drama.   The witches get their due and are hung, but before they die one casts a spell saying that they will be resurrected if a virgin ever lights a black candle in their home.  Binx (the immortal boycat) (I’m going to call him that from now on) spends generations guarding the house, and for over three hundred years he’s successful in stopping the black candle from being lit, but one Halloween Max and his sister Dani, new to the town, go up to the witches’ house—now a museum—and what does Max do?  He lights the candle, of course.  All to impress a girl.

Of course he happens to be a virgin, and the witch sisters come back to life—and then hilarity, along with some vaguely creepy (in a fun, corny way) kind of stuff happens.  Can Max save his sister from being the witches’ next lifeforce meal? Can they ever break the curse on Binx the Immortal Boycat?

This movie is just a lot of fun.  Any movie with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimi as witches is BOUND to be a lot of fun.  And with those three, you’d better believe there’s a musical number involved.

Kitschy, corny, and classic.  I give this an A.

Thursday Myths & Legends: Jack O’ Lanterns

Walking around town, I’m starting to see more and more pumpkins out on porches.  Halloween is certainly coming on fast.  Did you ever wonder why we carve up pumpkins with scary faces and light them up with candles, though?  I have.

There are a few different stories as to how Jack o’ Lanterns were started, but they all follow more or less the same.  There’s a man named Jack who was just of the worst class of people – disorderly, drunk, and usually in debt.  The how and why differ, but in all of the stories, he somehow manages to trick and trap the devil, by means of a cross—in one he’s being chased out of town for his debts and convinces the devil to turn into a coin to trick the townspeople, turning them against each other when the coin would later disappear.  The devil jumps into his pocket as a silver coin, but lands next to a cross and is trapped.  In another story Jack convinces the devil to climb a tree, then carves a cross into the trunk.

What happens after this is that he bargains to let the devil go if he promises to never take Jack’s soul, which he does, and so Jack lives out the rest of his life, but he’s been such a bad person, he can’t get into Heaven but when he goes down to Hell, the devil reminds Jack of their bargain and turns him away out of spite for having been tricked by him.  When Jack asks where he is to go, and how he is to find his way, the devil mockingly tosses him an ember from Hell that will never fade, and Jack hollowed out a turnip (sometimes given to him by a wiseman, or God) and carried it as a lantern as he walked the earth, searching for a place of rest.

So, moral of the story—don’t mess with the devil, kids.

Interestingly enough, though, the phrase “jack o’ lantern” originally referred to night watchmen or will’o the wisps, the strange flickering light over peat bogs.  It still does mean the latter in Labrador and Newfoundland.