365 bedtime stories

The preparations for the party to be given at Janet’s house that Hallowe’en evening had already begun. Already they were hanging apples attached firmly by strings from a door-way and as soon as the guests came and the tricks began they would all try to bite these apples, which would swing so annoyingly away from them!

And there was going to be a dish of flour in the kitchen after supper and the children were all going to try to find a twenty-five cent piece hidden there. They were going to hunt for it with their teeth! And there were apples bobbing in a great tub of water. And these had to be caught by the teeth too. Some of these held pennies!

There would be fortune-telling, too, and Janet’s mother had promised to be the fortune-telling witch who would sit by her caldron which was now being made of red cheese-cloth. At the bottom of it, barely hidden, there would be a flashlight which would be kept going all the time, of course!

Oh, the party was going to be splendid. Janet knew that. And yet—and yet—she wished she knew why they had a party—not that she didn’t want a party! But just why was it for this evening with the strange name. What did Hallowe’en really mean? She hated to ask for she felt she should know and that she would be laughed at for not knowing.

“Why, Janet,” her mother said that afternoon late as she caught sight of Janet’s little worried face, “this isn’t the time to look sad when we’re having a party! What is the trouble, my darling?”

There was something in the understanding, sweet way that her mother asked her that made Janet ask what she thought was so foolish a question.

“Mother dear,” she began, “just what does Hallowe’en mean?”

“October thirty-first,” her mother said, “is the vigil of All Saints’ Day, or Hallowe’en, for Hallow means to devote time to holy purposes and e’en is short for evening. So that it means the evening before the religious day which is known as All Saints’ Day.

“But Hallowe’en, while coming before a religious day, has always been an evening of festivity and frolic and fun for children. In all countries they celebrate it—it is a real children’s evening—though in various countries the children have their own little ways of celebrating.

“Our way, though, is used by children of many countries and we have make-believe witches just as they have, for in the olden days in the old countries those who were superstitious or given to imagining things not so, thought witches came out on Hallowe’en.”

And somehow, Janet never enjoyed a party so much, for it was so nice to know just what the day meant and to know too that in many countries children on this very evening were having a celebration of such a weirdly wonderful kind!