Prime your pumpkins: Ireland is gearing up for its annual Halloween festival and this year promises to be a cracker! A whole week’s worth of ghoulish Halloween happenings are afoot at the Lullymore Heritage Park in Co Kildare, including terror train trips, a Funky Forest, and fancy dress competition. You can follow the Peril’s Pumpkin Trail at Malahide Castle, Co. Dublin, or marvel at the Macnas Halloween Parade through Galway City, full of giant sculptures, pyrotechnics and live music.
Halloween began in Ireland as the ancient pagan festival of Samhain (or ‘Summer’s End’), celebrated over 3000 years ago to mark the beginning of winter. It’s said that at Halloween the boundary between our world and the next is at its thinnest, allowing spirits and demons to pass easily between the two. So people lit huge bonfires and wore masks and disguises to confuse spirits; and they also created menacing faces out of hollowed-out turnips, adding a lit candle for added protection.
Sound familiar? These days, of course, we’re more likely to use pumpkins: if you haven’t grown your own already this season, pop into the garden centre here in Athlone and pick up one of our monster fruits to take home and carve yourself, along with plenty of fun Halloween themed decorations so you can really enter into the spirit (sorry!) of the occasion.
Pumpkin carving has become something of an art form recently, and you’ll find lots of opportunities to try out your skills, or perhaps learn some new ones! Take part in the decorated pumpkin competition at the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin; and bring the kids along to a pumpkin carving workshop at Powerscourt Estate, Co Wicklow. And of course don’t miss the Galway Pumpkin Patch – opening for the first time this year for decorations, fancy dress games, face painting and of course pumpkin picking!
