10/30/26 - Goodbye Picard! Happy Halloween!!!
Friday 10/30/26
Celebrate:
Buy a Doughnut Day
Checklist Day
Create a Great Funeral Day
Frankenstein Friday
Haunted Refrigerator Night
Mischief Night
National Bandanna Day
National Breadstick Day
National Candy Corn Day
National Publicist Day
National Speak Up For Service Day
National Text Your Ex Day
Pumpkin Bread Day
Sugar Addiction Awareness Day
World Lemur Day
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New at Theaters
Welcome to the Holidays..the first film of the season.
Christmas at the Kringles - action movie with Donald Faison, Beverly D'Angelo, Ron Livingston, Thomas Lennon, Rob Riggle, Arden Myrin, David Wain, and Rachel Bilson.
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It's a bad week for Star Trek Fans. Sir Patrick Stewart has died at 86.
He led the Star Ship Enterprise as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on it's second TV incarnation, The Next Generation from 1987-94 and Picard from 2020-2023.
He was also in the X-Men movies as Professor Charles Xavier.
One of his last roles was a voice part in The Sheep Deceives.
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Halloween traces back over 2,000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced SOW-in), celebrated on November 1st. Celts believed the boundary between the living and the dead blurred on the night before, allowing spirits to return to Earth.
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People lit bonfire blazes and wore costumes—often animal heads and skins—to disguise themselves so wandering spirits would mistake them for fellow ghosts rather than living humans.
Also an old Scottish superstition claims that if you wear your clothes inside out and walk backward on Halloween night, you'll see a witch at midnight.
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Jack-o'-lanterns originated in Ireland using carved turnips, beets, and potatoes lit with coal. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to North America and switched to native pumpkins because they were far easier to hollow out and carve.
The tradition comes from "Stingy Jack," a man cursed to wander the night with only a burning coal inside a hollowed-out turnip to light his path.
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In traditional Irish Halloween celebrations, families baked a special fruit bread called Barmbrack containing hidden objects. Finding a ring meant marriage within a year, a thimble meant you’d stay single, a coin promised wealth, and a rag predicted poverty.
(and probably a few trips to the emergency room for chocking on all that stuff in the bread!)
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The association between black cats and bad luck stems from Medieval Europe, where people believed witches could transform into black cats to hide in the dark. (I have yet to see him turn back.)
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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a popular superstition claimed that if a young woman stood in a dark room and looked into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, she would see the face of her future husband.
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Spiders in the Corner: According to folk legend, if you spot a spider in your home on Halloween night, it isn't an intruder—it's the spirit of a deceased loved one watching over you.
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Why is candy corn associated with Halloween when it was created as mock Chicken Feed.
Because corn was strongly tied to autumn harvest season, candy corn naturally became popular between Labor Day and Thanksgiving.
As trick-or-treating surged in popularity across American suburbs after World War II, parents began looking for individually wrapped or small, cheap pre-made treats.
Candy manufacturers realized they could maximize sales by tying their fall production run specifically to October 31st. Since candy corn was already the signature autumn candy, it easily claimed the crown for Halloween.
Today, around 35 million pounds of candy corn are produced each year, with the vast majority sold during the weeks leading up to October 31st.
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