Bobbing Apples

Typical harvest fruit display nowadays

With the darker nights and the festival to greet the spirits of the ancestors, come the traditions of games.  There are a multitude of games now, many ordinary traditional games given a Halloween twist, like "Witch's Tag" which is just tag but where the catcher pretends to be a witch.  But two traditions that seem to have survived the centuries are that of apple bobbing and making mischief - the precursor of Trick or Treating.

Apple bobbing could be traced back to the Roman festival of the dead which was celebrated also in winter and may, in northern Europe, have been  moved to coincide with the Celtic festival.  The Romans also believed that at special times of transition, such as the time marking the change from autumn to winter, or winter to spring, the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead became less rigid, and the spirits of the dead could once again visit and walk among the living.  As the Roman army spread north and conquered Celtic lands, they absorbed existing local traditions and adapted their own.  The Roman festival of the dead, Feralia,  may have been blended in with Samhain, and added to this was a festival in honour of Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees, whose dedicated fruit was apples.

A sacred fruit, symbol of knowledge 

Besides being sacred to the goddess, the apple was also an ancient symbol of knowledge.  From here stems the tradition of an apple being used by young women to predict the name of the man they were to marry.  A young woman would do this by making sure that she peeled the skin of the apple in one with no breakages, casting this over her right shoulder and the letter the skin formed on the floor behind her was said to be the letter of the first name of her destined husband.  The apple is also said to hold within its core, secrets of knowledge through a link to the otherworld, symbolised by the pentagram that can be discerned in the core and the pattern of the pips when the apple is sliced in half.  It was biting the apple of the forbidden tree of knowledge that condemned Eve and Adam to be cast away from the Garden of Eden.  There is also a link to fertility, and apple bobbing was played by floating apples in water, or hanging them from strings from branches.  The first person to manage to take a bite from an apple without using their hands would be the next person in the village to be able to marry.

In a world where too often traditional games are banned because of health and safety fears - I don't think anyone has drowned by apple bobbing - traditional Halloween games can be fun.  As can the traditional autumn game in England of conkers.  These days, apples are floated in a large bowl and people hold their hands behind their back and lean over the bowl to try to bite an apple.  "Eat the Baby" in one of the blog's pages, is a variation of the game changed to suit much younger children.  Try it this Halloween.  It's wet, but it's huge fun!

One last word on apples - turning them into toffee apples (candy apples I think they're called in US).  It's one of the of the best Halloween traditions ever.  We're going to try them again this year - it's our family tradition!

 Chilling Tales for Winter Nights

The manuscript is ready, the proofs are being checked...........it won't be long now!

Story telling is another winter tradition and Halloween is the perfect time for the telling of ghost stories and stories to make the spine tingle and raise the hair on your skin. Look out for my "Last Lullaby", a collection of chilling short stories due out soon.