MARK MY WORD: HALLOWEEN GREAT TIME TO PLAY WITH FIRE

Halloween's a great time of year. Mom and Dad get to carve up the pumpkin and play with fire, and the kids get to dress up like the little goblins and witches that they are.

The kids get to visit strangers' houses where they can ask for candy without getting a lecture from Mom and Dad.

My daughter, Becca, used to love to help hand out the candy to the visiting devils and other costumed kids. But since she has grown up to the big-girl age of 2 1/2, she has discovered that the real fun is in eating chocolate bars and getting a gooey face.

If you are a Druid, this is a perfect holiday.

Halloween was originally a Celtic festival, although there wasn't any candy because supermarkets hadn't been invented yet.

The Celts lived more than 2,000 years ago in what is now Great Britain, Ireland and northern France. They would have lived in America, but they didn't know about it.

The celebration marked the beginning of the season of cold, darkness and decay. Today, it is called Election Day.

Druids, who were the priests and teachers of the Celts, ordered the people to put out their hearth fires because of new OSHA regulations.

The Druids, who didn't want to freeze, built a huge bonfire out of oak branches, which they considered more sacred than poison ivy. Back then, people burned sacred things like cows, crops and next-door neighbors.

During the Halloween celebration, people wore costumes made of animal heads and skins. Richard Nixon masks weren't available back then.

The Romans conquered the Celts in A.D. 43. The Romans, who also enjoyed burning things, thought Halloween was a great idea and had no trouble coming up with costumes.

In England, Halloween was sometimes called Nutcracker Night or Snap Apple Night. Families sat by the fire and told stories while they ate apples and nuts. This may have been a hit with health-conscious parents, but it was a bummer for the kids who wanted to eat candy.

To me, it just wouldn't seem like Halloween without those candlelit, orange pumpkins glowing all over the neighborhood.

The jack-o'-lantern developed from an Irish folk tale. A fellow named Jack, notorious for being drunk and mean, outsmarted the devil and extracted a promise that the devil would never claim his soul.

When he died, Jack found he couldn't enter heaven or hell. Instead, he had to wander around for eternity and watch bad Halloween movies.

The devil gave him a burning coal to light his way and Jack put it inside a turnip he was eating. Just think what would have happened if he had had a McDonald's Happy Meal with him.

At any rate, Irish immigrants brought to America the custom of carving Jack's lantern from outsized rutabagas, potatoes and turnips.

Americans soon got tired of carving Mr. Potato Head and settled for carving up those orange squash things instead.

If that hadn't happened, potatoes would be lined up on straw bales in front of stores every Halloween and people would place glowing spuds on their front porches.

And Halloween vandals would have given new meaning to mashed potatoes.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.