Stealing the Fire from Hell

I love Halloween and I think it's a very misunderstood holiday. Its origins are in Celtic (Irish, go figure) - a harvest celebration - a coming together of death (the harvesting of the crops) and life (coming from the food from the harvest).

Interestingly enough, redheads have long been associated with the supernatural. German folk culture believed that redheads were witches and from 1483-1784 thousands of suspected witches were stripped and searched for "marks of the devil" which included any abnormality such as freckles, moles, warts or birthmarks. This pretty much screws most redheads since many of have many many freckles.

For example, my mother doesn't tan - she just waits for all of her freckles to connect to make her darker! I have a few but nothing even close to that. I'm not a be-speckled redhead. I'm just a redhead who can't get a tan to save her life. Oh well.

Because of our natural beauty or "abnormality", an estimated 45,000 women were tortured and murdered, usually by burning at the stake or by drowning.

Germans weren't the only culture to persecute us - Egyptions also regarded redheads as so unlucky that they had a ceremony in which they burned redheaded maidens. Still Greek mythology tells us that redheads turned into Vampires after they die and during the Spanish Inquisition, redheads were thought to have stollen the fire of hell and had to be burned as a witch.

Hmmm...i was a witch last year....maybe I'll go as a devil next year :) I like the "stealing the fire of hell" bit. I'm sure some of my ex's would agree.

Either way, light your pumpkins, break out your candy, and be nice to redheads today - who knows....we might be witches after all!