Did you know a plant disease is responsible for the celebration of Halloween in the United States? The infection was called blight by regular people and scientists called Phytophthora infestans. Scientists almost always name things too hard to pronounce. Anyway, this blight killed almost all of the potato crops in Ireland. This was horrible because the potato was one of the primary food sources for Irish people. The blight caused millions of people to leave Ireland and many moved to the United States. When they moved they brought a lot of traditions with them, and one of those was Halloween.

Carving Jack-O-Lanterns also came from Ireland. This tradition goes back over 2,000 years. Back in the day there were no flashlights and the only way to see after dark was to use lanterns, candles or torches. Sad day!! No flashlight tag for those kids. People would carve vegetables, mostly turnips, with holes to put candles in and use that as their lanterns. When the Irish people got to America they found that  pumpkins were bigger and since it was hollow it was easier to carve. Over time the faces went from very simple to detailed faces of people, animals and houses. Did you know pumpkins are fruit and not vegetables?

Trick or Treating is another European Halloween tradition. One reason the  holiday was celebrated was to pray for the souls of people who had died. People began to put sweets on their porches to make the dead happy. Children who craved the sweets would go door to door. They would offer to bring good luck to the house if they got sweets or bad luck if they didn’t. As the years went by the trick part entered the tradition. If the children did not get candy they would pull pranks on the people who lived in that house.