Halloween and Traditions about Marriage

Did you know that a lot of the traditions of Halloween weren’t actually about the dead or the past?  The whole bobbing for apples thing and pretty much anything having to do with apples, has to do with the future.  The first successful bobber would be the first one married that year (sounds like the bridal bouqet to me).  Young women thought they could figure out who their husbands were going to be based on throwing the peel over her shoulder and seeing what letter or shape it took on landing.

In the same vein, a matchmaker would bury a ring in the bowl of mashed potatoes, bringing luck and love to the person who found it.

According to the History Channel (I know, they can be sketchy sometimes, but I’ve found this in many places)

In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband.

  Women would even stand in dark rooms with just a candle staring into a mirror in hopes of seeing their future husband’s face reflected back to them.