Some Fun Facts about Halloween

I have always loved Halloween.  As a kid my favorite all time costume was me dressed up as a mom (yep, high heels included) pushing a baby carriage in our school parade.  My dog, Friskie, was the baby and he even agreed to wear a hat.

Many Halloweens have passed and I still enjoy all the festivities.  Decorating the outside of our house makes me smile, picking out “healthy” candy is fun, and greeting all our neighborhood kids is awesome.

Today I am listing a few fun facts about this long celebrated holiday.  For a family activity see what additional fact your kids discover about Halloween.

• Halloween has been celebrated for over 2000 years
• Consumers spend over 2.5 billion dollars during Halloween on candy, costumes and decorations
• World record for carving a face into a pumpkin is 20.1 seconds as of October, 2010
• A pumpkin is really a squash, and comes from the same family as the cucumber.
• In 2012, Ron Wallace from Greene, RI, has grown a pumpkin that weighs a whopping 2,009 pounds, making it not only the largest pumpkin in history, but also the largest fruit ever grown in the world.
• Bobbing for apples is thought to have originated from the roman harvest festival that honors Pamona, the goddess of fruit
• According to folklore the jack-o-lantern got its name from a man named Jack
• The first Jack O’Lanterns were actually made from turnips.
• Orange and black are traditional Halloween colors.  Orange represents the fall harvest and black is for darkness.
• The correct spelling for Halloween is actually Hallowe’en

Any special Halloween traditions at your house?  Give us a treat and tell us about them.