Halloween Experts

Of all the great Halloween food recipes we have tried for kids’ parties, these are our favorite to make and the most popular with our small guests! We like to serve these with a small, individual condiment cup of ketchup, chips, and a few grapes.

Hot Dog Mummies:

INGREDIENTS:

1 can (8 oz) packaged, refrigerated crescent dinner rolls or 1 can (8 oz) packaged, refrigerated seamless dough sheet

2 1/2 slices American cheese, quartered (2.5 oz)

10 large hot dogs

Cooking spray

Mustard or ketchup, if desired

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oven to 375°F.

2. If using packaged crescent rolls: Unroll dough; separate at perforations, creating 4 rectangles. Press perforations to seal. If using dough sheet: Unroll dough; cut into 4 rectangles.

3. With knife or kitchen scissors, cut each rectangle lengthwise into 10 pieces, making a total of 40 pieces of dough. Slice cheese slices into quarters (1/2 slice cheese, cut in half).

4. Wrap 4 pieces of dough around each hot dog and 1/4 slice of cheese to look like “bandages,” stretching dough slightly to completely cover hot dog. About 1/2 inch from one end of each hot dog, separate “bandages” so hot dog shows through for “face.” On ungreased large cookie sheet, place wrapped hot dogs (cheese side down); spray dough lightly with cooking spray.

5. Bake 13 to 17 minutes or until dough is light golden brown and hot dogs are hot. With mustard, draw features on “face.”

Billed as the “World’s Largest Halloween Party”, the Louisville Zoo in Louisville, Kentucky holds an annual “Be Seen – Not Scared” Halloween party during the month of October. Aimed at children under the age of 11, the Zoo provides a safe trick or treating environment. Costumed characters interact with the children to provide Halloween entertainment that will not frighten or traumatize the young visitors. Live storybook scenes can be found all over the Zoo. If you attend the World’s Largest Halloween Party at the Louisville Zoo, be prepared for large crowds, because this popular event draws upwards of 85,000 visitors each year.

The World’s Largest Halloween Street Party is the infamous West Hollywood Halloween Carnivale on Santa Monica Boulevard. Approximately 500,000 people will swell the population of this Southern California town for the popular carnivale costume contest on Halloween night, but there are special activities every night in the week leading up to it. This is no children’s trick or treating event. Both costumes and activities are adult-themed.

The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade may be the largest Halloween-themed event in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of elaborately costumed New Yorkers will pour into the streets to enjoy live bands, dancers and parade activities. It is estimated that over 2 million participants and spectators will enjoy this year’s event. The Parade began in 1973, the brainchild of a Village mask maker and puppeteer, and has come to be one of New York’s treasured holiday traditions. It is also the only major parade held in the United States as a night time event.

* More than 1/3 of all Americans believe in ghosts, according to an AP poll conducted in 2007.

* About 27% of Americans believe that they have seen a ghost or felt the presence of one.

* One in five people believe that witchcraft and spells are real.

* According to Hallmark, about 35 million Halloween cards are sold each year. Most of these are sent from grandparent to grandchild.

* The earliest Halloween cards in the U.S. are from around 1908.

* According to U.S. census information, there are approximately 36 million potential trick or treaters between the ages of 5 and 13.

* The world’s record for the largest pumpkin was set in 2009 by Christy Harp from Ohio, with a pumpkin that weighed 1,725 pounds (roughly the same weight as a 1967 VW Beetle).

* The average American consumes 24.5 pounds of candy per year, much of it during the Halloween season.

* The fear that trick or treaters will receive candy tainted with poison, needles or razor blades is based on an urban legend, and not on fact. Researchers have been unable to verify a single case of contaminated candy that killed or made a trick or treater seriously ill.

* The fear that black cats are in danger of being sacrificed by a satanic cult on Halloween is also unfounded. Satanic cults are more frequent in fiction than in fact, and the few documented cases of abuse can be attributed to disturbed individuals, usually loners.

I’m sure you will recall a cartoon from your childhood, wherein an anthropomorphized farm animal, most likely a stuttering pig, was planting seeds in his garden. Quite unknown to him, a large, wisecracking crow was walking behind him, eating the seeds as he dropped them. Hilarity ensued as the farmer tried to devise more and more elaborate plans to shoo the thieving bird, who was obviously smarter than the pig. As you would expect, one of the first solutions he devised was a scarecrow. Scarecrows have been around for thousands of years. Since they are usually homemade, every scarecrow is as unique as it’s creator. They are common to so many cultures around the world, that scarecrows have come to be a universal symbol of the fall harvest time. Because they can be frightening to more than just crows, they have also become a familiar Halloween symbol.

The earliest scarecrows, that we know of, were placed in fields along the Nile River to discourage flocks of quail from dining on ancient Egyptian crops. These were not the traditional mannequins that we recognize today, but wooden frames with nets stretched across them. Farmers hid in the field and then scared the birds into the nets, providing a main course for their dinner.

The ancient Greek farmers carved wooden statues of the god, Priapus, the god of fertility, to place in their fields. Although he was the son of Aphrodite and Dionysus, Priapus was supposed to be very ugly. The farmers noticed that fields, with Priapus statues in them, were less bothered by birds and produced a greater harvest, so more and more farmers carved the statues. Some painted him purple and equipped him with weapons to make him look even more frightening. Roman farmers adopted this practice from the Greeks, and then carried it with them into northern Europe and Great Britain.

At about the same time, the Japanese were also building scarecrows to protect their rice fields. They erected bamboo poles, to which they attached old rags, fish bones, rotten food, and noisemakers. They called them “kakashi”, which means “smelly thing”. Eventually, they made scarecrows that looked like people in woven reed raincoats and round pointed hats. These too, were called kakashi, even though they didn’t smell bad.

During the middle ages, when men attributed supernatural powers to so many things, they built scarecrows that they believed had special powers. Italian farmers put skulls on top of poles to scare birds and protect the crops from disease. In Germany, they built wooden witches to draw the evil spirit of winter from the earth, and ensure the coming of spring.

In Medieval Britain and Europe, children were used as bird scarers, throwing stones or clacking blocks of wood together to frighten away the pests, until the time of the great plague. Since there was a shortage of children for the job, farmers stuffed old clothes and carved a gourd for a head and mounted their straw man on a wooden cross erected in the field.

German immigrants to the United States brought the tradition of stuffing clothes with straw, using a mop head or broom for the top, tying a red bandana or handkerchief around their necks. They called him a “bootzamon” or bogeyman. Frequently he occupied one end of the field, while his wife, called the “bootzafrau”, dressed in ladies garments and a bonnet, guarded the other end.

Why are scarecrows associated with Halloween? It was just before the fall harvest when crows would come to devastate the crops. During this magical time of year, it was believed that the veil between the land of the living and the spirit world was at its thinnest. Spirits from beyond were desperate to possess a physical body. If there was no hapless human nearby, then surely a scarecrow was near enough. Considering that scarecrows were intended to frighten unwanted guests and pests, it isn’t surprising that myths and legends have grown up around them. Tales of whispering scarecrows, stories of those that come down from their posts and terrorize the living, haunted and possessed scarecrows are some of the stories that make them seem dark and sinister, and very appropriate as a Halloween symbol.

Scarecrows are still a common sight all over the world. Making your own, for your Halloween décor, is as simple as stuffing old clothes and an old pillowcase, for the head, with straw. Tie the ends of arms and legs with twine. Tie on the head. Accessorize your scarecrow with patches, hats, boots, etc. Prop him on a bale of hay, or a attach him to a stake to be posted in your yard and he will scare birds, greet your guests, and otherwise herald the harvest season.