Friendly Friday Challenge: Neighborhood Walk

Sandy,

I took a walk around the neighborhood and was reminded that this is a big weekend for kids. The autumnal leaves already make my street pretty but the neighbors have also decorated it for Halloween.

Hereabouts, October is the unofficial start of the dress up the front yard season. Gone are the days of just mowing the lawn and tending the flower beds. It’s the beginning of seasonal decorations: Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Years.

This week’s Friendly Friday Photo Challenge is to take a NEIGHBORHOOD WALK and share seasonal sights about your hometown.

In Canada and the US, Halloween is the first of the holiday run-up to the end of the year. It’s a very big deal for the kids. It’s a day of costumes, pumpkin carving and candy. Leading up to the big day, the trek to school is delightfully frightful with tombstones, jack o lanterns and giant spiders guiding the way. This year because of the pandemic there will be no door-to-door trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Instead kids will have fun at home and enjoy their candy stash there.

According to Google not every country celebrates Halloween. The North American holiday originates from Scottish and Irish influences in the mid 19th century. Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve which is the vigil before All Saints Day on November 1. Dating back to Europe’s medieval times, many Christians held the folk belief that All Hallows’ Eve was the night when the veil between the material world and the afterlife was at its most transparent. Hence the holiday’s obsession with ghosts, ghouls and thoroughly scary creatures.

I look forward to seeing photos from your NEIGHBORHOOD WALK. If Halloween is not celebrated there (and even if it is) is there something else on show? Tell us about it!

Remember to include a link to this post and a comment below.

If you’re new to Friendly Friday, full instructions on how to participate can be found here.

This week’s challenge for a NEIGHBORHOOD WALK  goes up to Thursday, after which Amanda at StPA will post a new Friendly Friday challenge.

Toronto, Canada.  October 2020

29 Comments

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  12. Halloween decorations are not as proliferate in Germany. But I thought I share something which I had published on my other blog site (which I now keep for special occasions). As I might have mentioned before I’m part of a running group and we do hares and hounds events every week. As severer restrictions because of COVID have come again we are back to looking for alternative means to run a trail together without being together. The trail I made can be run anywhere you chose, anytime. For our group it is before Sunday as we will meet on zoom then. Don’t worry about a few abbreviations which might be internal lingo. And yes, we drink beer while running (sometimes – but COVID times are as good an excuse as any). https://picturesimperfect2.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/fh3-1824/

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    1. Today I learned something from you posts. I didn’t know what ‘hare & hounds’ were and had to look it up. I didn’t realise that running clubs were so much fun. I’ve only seen runners who were very healthy and very intense. I’ve assumed its just water in their water bottle 🙂

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      1. That’s only runners that we hashers call race-ists. 🙂 The social aspect of running is very important to hashing. One of the great things about laying a trail with false trails and other impediments is that while the strong, fast runners check out the proper directions the slow pokes (such as me) have time to catch up with them. The sign of a good trail is the whole pack arriving at the end point within a reasonable amount of time; the fast runners having done about 10 k, the slow ones 6 or 7 and the walkers (for whom there are usually short cuts) 4 or 5.

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    1. It’s funny how some holidays get adopted just because of the fun aspect. Halloween, costume and candy are kid magnets.
      For Diwali, how do you celebrate it in India?

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  15. Excellent prompt for this week’s challenge, Sandy. Love that you varied the expected Halloween theme. We are actually celebrating Halloween here. Strangely enough. Our pandemic is over for the present time, as we have no cases at all and I think people are really responding to the retailers push for Halloween celebrations. They want to sell products and the people want to get out and about.
    I don’t like the concept but didn’t grow up with it. All I can think of is stranger danger and what is in those lollies. Nevertheless, we have two Halloween parties to attend…..

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    1. I liked Halloween because of my kids. When they were small, I used to make home-made costumes & encourage them to dress-up. I think it’s a bit of a cheat to go to the store & buy costumes. For the candy … I restricted how many neighbors they could visit and how much to eat at a time. It’s amazing how long a stash of candy to last 🙂

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      1. My son and his friend would ration out easter eggs. My husband has a large family and there would be so much chocolate around at Easter that much of it had to be stored in the fridge – due to the heat here. My son would finish his stash by May sometime. His friend’s Mother would dust her son’t eggs each week till July! Then throw them out if not eaten. Reminds me a bit of your kids and their Halloween candy. I guess it is a good idea to restrict who they could visit. I imagine lots of hyperactive kids going nuts at Halloween.

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