Halloween
It is thought that more than 18,000 tonnes of pumpkins are thrown away each year! If they end up in a landfill, they can cause a problem. The lack of oxygen in landfills means organic matter like pumpkin produces methane gas, a greenhouse gas harmful to the climate. When you’ve finished with your pumpkin, put it out for the wildlife to feed on or compost it.
Spending, in general, on Halloween in the last 10 years has gone from about 200 million in 2013 to about 800 million now.
According to the Mail
Trick or treat? Children will consume more than 3,000 calories just from Halloween sweets. Researchers found kids will consume 3,190 calories from trick or treating. A survey found children also pocket £5.27 on top of all of their sweets. Parents were also affected by consuming an extra 1,710 calories each.
Instead of giving sweets, give coins, temporary tattoos, stickers, themed pencils and erasers or Halloween theme bookmakers, but no plastic.
Save the seeds from these pumpkins and remove the flesh from the seeds. Leave the shells on, spread them out on a tray and roast gently until lightly crisp; add salt. Shell the seeds before eating them.
The History of Halloween world history.org
Halloween traditions in the West date back thousands of years to the festival of Samhain (pronounced ‘Soo-when’, ‘So-ween’ or ‘Saw-wen’), the Celtic New Year’s festival. The name means “summer’s end”, and the festival marked the close of the harvest season and the coming of winter. The Celts believed that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest at this time, so the dead could return and walk where they had before. Further, those who had died in the past year and who, for one reason or another, had not yet moved on, could do so at this time and might interact with the living in saying good-bye.
