Holiday Shopping

Hello All!

A number of you have been bringing 

your holiday shopping lists to us (thank you sooo much!)

Holiday postcard circa 1920's

 So I thought I would officially 

suggest to do that here on the blog. 

So a suggestion:

Bring your holiday shopping lists to our ZinJan Art booth!

The offer I have been giving to folks is this: 

Buy 12 pendants and get 1 free-an artist's baker's dozen.

That works out to approximately $9.23 per pendant...

a great price for a customized holiday gift.

On the subject of holidays

 I am going to continue a bit with Halloween-

I love Halloween!

So I was wondering when the 

whole Trick or Treat thing got started...

and how did it get started?

So being the geek that I am...

I did a bit of research and here is what I found out:

The practice of dressing up in costumes 

and begging door to door 

for treats on holidays 

dates back to the middle ages 

and started in Ireland and Britain. 

Trick-or-treating is closely related 

to the medieval practice of souling ... 

which was when poor people would go 

door to door on 'Hallowmas' (November 1),

and  receive food in exchange 

for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day.

The custom of wearing costumes and masks at Halloween 

goes back to Celtic traditions of 

attempting to emulate the evil spirits or appease them 

by disguising or 'guising' oneself... as they say in the Celtic tradition!

'Guisers' at Halloween in Scotland were first  recorded in 1895 - 

they would carry lanterns made out of scooped out turnips 

and alight on the doorsteps of neighbors homes 

hoping to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money.  

                                                

Guising at Halloween in North America 

is first recorded in 1911, in a newspaper article from Kingston, Ontario 

that reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.

In American Ruth Edna Kelly of Massachusetts 

wrote the first book  history of the holiday in the United States

titled  The Book of Hallow'een (1919).  

Kelley relays customs that came to America from across the Atlantic; 

"Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion 

something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. 

All Hallowe'en customs in the United States are borrowed directly

 or adapted from those of other countries".

The practice of  "trick-or-treating" began 

in the western United States and Canada and then spread eastward. 

The fairly new tradition was brought to a halt 

because of sugar rationing during World War II. 

The earliest national attention given to trick-or-treating 

was in the October 1947 issues of the children's magazines 

Jack and Jill (which I loved to read in the dentist's office)

 and Children's Activities,

and in Halloween episodes of some radio programs such as;

  The Baby Snooks Show - 1946,  

The Jack Benny Show & The Ozzie and Harriet Show in 1948.

Trick-or-treating was officially noted in the Peanuts comic strip in 1951-

by then trick or treating was an intricate part of American culture - 

and when in 1952, Walt Disney did a cartoon 

entitled: Trick or Treat, 

it became part of American culture! 

WHEW! Enough Halloween geekiness for today!

Hope to see ya all at the SLC Farmer's Market Saturday!

Terry

xo