Family traditions are steeped in memories that often carry through to future generations.  When I was a child my mother would always read the poem Little Ophant Annie by James Whitcomb Riley every Hallow’s Eve to my brother, sister and myself at dinnertime.  We’d prepare for darkness to properly arrive so we could run through the neighborhood and shout “Trick or Treat!” and come home with pillow cases full of candy. That led to the authoritarian practice of our parents eating the candy so we wouldn’t end up with cavities.  A great example of child labor.  We gather the goodies, the parents reap the benefits.

Every Hallow’s Eve I find the air charged with a static electricity that is hard to deny.  I’ve felt this way since childhood.  There is an anticipation.  A something wicked this way comes.  Each year I search the nightskies for a sign, or sit silently around a firepit giving thanks to all who have walked before in my family.  I come from strong Yankee stock, stoic First American ways, and European ingenuity.

My tradition for Hallow’s Eve has been the same for the past fourty-three years.  I make crescent shaped Sabbat cakes and give them to all my friends and family.  Fourty-three years.  That’s a long time.  Why do I do it?  It’s my poem reading.  It’s my little honored gift to the Gods and Goddesses who were once held Sacred and seen in every living cell in nature.  Always made in the hour of Venus, and with candles lit, a blessing of protection and prosperity goes into each one of these little hard, mostly tasteless cakes.

While I don’t have enough to share in cyberworld I’ll post this picture and you can imagine taking one for yourself.  It’s my “insurance” that by keeping a tradition on Hallow’s Eve I can somehow keep the phrase ‘An’ the gobble-uns ‘at gits you ef you don’t watch out!’ satisfied for another year.

Tags: Childhood, halloween, little orphant annie, old ways, poem, sabbat, traditions