I had never actually attended a Table Talk before this one and really enjoyed it not only because it was Halloween but, because I got to interact with other Rose Scholars and GRF Seema. Interestingly, I never knew that Halloween was the second most commercialized holiday in the United States. I mean I was aware of the amount shopping that goes with costumes, decorations, candy, and parties but, I wasn’t entirely convinced. It is almost no surprise that Christmas is the most commercialized. Actually, in retrospect, I am kind of surprised that Halloween and Christmas don’t elicit the same amount of spending. Then again, we discussed at the Table Talk how many people do not celebrate Halloween as it was associated with the dead coming back. I personally know several people who wouldn’t let their children Trick or Treat or engage in any Halloween festivities and it was because of this idea that the dead were coming back.

I was aware of the Pagan holiday of Samhain but I didn’t know that there were Roman influences on the holiday. In addition, I found it amazing how the Celtic people would actually make the masks in order to scare the dead or make sure that the dead didn’t recognize them. These beliefs stemmed from the idea that after the harvest everything died for the winter, the times of cold, sickness, and death. Thus, this holiday could be thought of as a coping mechanism to be on terms that there is a dark age coming. The descendants of the Celtic people, the Irish, eventually came to the United States where the Halloween holiday became what it is today. After this Table Talk, I remembered seeing some old school, nightmare worthy costumes and decided to share(http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/creepy-halloween-costumes-gallery-1.2418269?pmSlide=1.2418256).