Bad Manners and Brimstone

Bobbing for apples was associated with Halloween in America for years.  I haven't heard about it in a while because it is now considered unsanitary.  No Halloween/Apple customs otherwise that I know of.  Candy Coated apples are less popular too.  Skeletins, zombies, gravestones  etc have gained in popularity for decore.

I've once again been observing how in the last decade or so the traditional English Halloween has been completely swamped by imported American merchandise, to the extent that everybody knows instinctively that a particular shade of orange = Halloween-themed, even though pumpkins aren't native to Europe and weren't grown and rarely ever imported here before the millennium. (The early settlers in New England were used to carving their Halloween lanterns out of turnips, but finding no turnips in the New World they made do with pumpkins instead.)

I was wondering whether any of the traditional customs are still practised at home, and it occurred to me for the first time what a large part apples played in the Halloween of my youth. At parties on 31 October apple-bobbing (apples are floating in a tub of water, and you have to kneel down with your hands behind your back and grab one with your teeth) was absolutely de rigueur. It's a fun party game, but unlike other party games such as Pin the Tail on the Donkey, it was only ever played at Halloween. Nobody ever said this, it was just understood. And of the many ways in which one could predict one's future on that night, by far the commonest was to peel an apple all in one strip without breaking it and, standing up and not looking backwards, throw it with the right hand over the left shoulder. Then turn around and look, and it will have fallen in the shape of the initial of the person you're destined to marry.

Well, of course apples are in season in October, so it's natural that they would be eaten and used at any festival taking place then (the same is true of turnips), but they are also traditionally a magical fruit (think Eve and the serpent, Snow White, many Grimm tales) so I wonder if there's more to it than that. And whether there are Halloween apple customs where you live?

HALLOWEEN EGGS!!!!!!

My workplace plays bingo sometimes and games at the yearly picnic. Once you win a prize, you can keep playing for bragging rights but you can't claim a second prize. It's more fun this way and nobody feels bad.

Maybe make that a rule for the next similar event.

Aunt did not know that she had the closest guess. I'm not sure what she would have done if told or asked if the prize be awarded to the next closest guess. She is rather competitive . . . for the Memory Game, she was one item off. She asked to see her list and compare it to the master list just to see what she missed.

If she did receive a second prize? She would have gloated.

Given the above, I don't think you were wrong at all.