Halloween Decoration Ideas

More Halloween decoration ideas – how about inflatable decorations? They are so easy to blow up and use and then so small to pack away for next year.

Pumpkins are synonymous with Halloween. They are that wonderful orange color and so robust and hardy when you cut them with a knife to make mask items. But cut out some of the hard work by using these inflatable pumpkins.

This is a stack of seven orange pumpkins that have black facial expressions. The stack measures ten ft high by ten ft wide by eleven ft deep approx when inflated. They can be used indorrs or outdoors and are a fun decoration for your yard.

It would not be Halloween without a few skulls around the place to make the atmosphere a little scary! And what better than a very large inflatable skull which is approx five ft high by 6 ft wide?  You would certainly get a shock coming round a corner and seeing this!  It is made from polyester, plastic and metal. The skull has a blackwith red cape attached to its head and when the skull is fully inflated its mouth and eyes will move up and down.

If you have a skull in your yard you will of course also need a black cat to bring you luck. What is the origin of this belief? Well, it could be that King Charles I of England possessed a black cat which he loved dearly.  He valued  the cat so much that his guards watched over it 24 /7.  Unfortunately, the day after the cat died, King Charles was arrested.

Your guests will appreciate this witches cauldron and the brew you can keep in it. You can add ice to keep the drinks cool or fill it with candy for the kids, small and large. Inflated, it is 4ft tall and can hold about 18 cans or bottles. A wonderfully novel way to keep your drinks cool this Halloween.

And, of course, they are many more novel Halloween decoration ideas.

Origins of Halloween

Halloween is a hodge-podge of holidays and autumnal traditions with roots dating back thousands of years. Through each new era in time, and with each culture that has observed it, this holiday has been re-interpreted and re-emerged with a new meaning.

Most historians trace the source of the modern-day Halloween to the ancient Celts of the British Isles, an agrarian people who divided the year into only two seasons: summer and winter. At summer’s end, they held a festival called Samhain (pronounced sow-in), essentially a Celtic New Year’s celebration. Samhain was a time to celebrate the harvest, acknowledge the past, and look toward the future.

Those who had died in the past year were remembered, and food was left for their spirits, which were said to be present as the year changed. Since looking into the future was important, priests practiced divination rituals. On Samhain night, all home fires were extinguished to represent the end of the year. A huge new fire was built by Celtic priests (known as Druids) and everyone re-lit their hearth fires with embers from the sacred fire.

It is said that Celts carried the embers from the sacred fire back to their home in  hollowed out turnips, a precursor to the jack-o’lantern lighting tradition. The Celts believed that the transition from the old year to the new created a sort of wrinkle in time; events that took place on this night existed outside of real time.

At this crucial crossroads between past and present, magical creatures such as fairies were especially active. The fairy mounds (underground fairy colonies) were open on Samhain, and fairies were free to come out and create all manner of mischief. Humans needed to protect themselves from tricky fairies, so some believe that wearing disguises to confuse the fairies may have been part of the Samhain rituals, and this may be how costumes became part of Halloween traditions.

As time went on, invaders brought other cultures to the British Isles. In 43 A. D, the Romans came along and stayed for almost 400 years. They brought their own autumn festivals with them, and eventually Celtic and Roman traditions started to overlap. The Romans celebrated Paternalia, a festival honoring the dead, in October, and on November I, they honored Pomona, the goddess of
fruit and trees. Pomona was represented holding an apple, and the festival involved playing games involving fruits and nuts. Halloween traditions such as bobbing for apples have their roots in this Roman custom.

As Christianity took hold in Britain and Ireland around the seventh century, the Church sought to separate their converts from their pre-Christian beliefs. The Church developed a new spin on the nature spirits and gods that the Celts and Romans had believed in. They were recast as demons, devils, and witches.

Since new Christians wanted to distance themselves from such negative images, they abandoned the old festivals and began to celebrate the new holy days that the church created, Hallowmas or Allhallows, now known as All Saints’ Day on November I and All Souls’ Day on November 2. The Church preserved the Roman practice of honoring the dead, but added the saints as well as the ancestors. The night before these holy days became known as All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallow e’en, and eventually Halloween.

Halloween by Joanne OSullivan

Halloween Decoration Ideas