Pride of Howe has first competition Howe Intermediate Top Dogs

The Pride of Howe competed Saturday in their first competition of the year at the Aubrey Marching Contest. This contest is a “warm up” contest somewhat akin to a non -district athletic contest as it gives the band the opportunity to compete without any playoff or advancement ramifications. The band just missed the cut to advance to the finals but came away with many positive and constructive critiques from the judges.

The band will continue to tweak and add to the performance this week before competing next Saturday at both the McKinney Marching Invitational and the Ponder Marching Contest.

Learn about your antiques and collectibles with Georgia Caraway

Halloween or as we residents of Howe like to call it Howelloween is at the end of this spooky month. It happens to be my favorite holiday to decorate for, right behind Christmas. Washington Irving’s 1820 short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” describes a party where Ichabod Crane hears the story of the Headless Horseman. This is considered the first American Halloween tale. The story includes many of the trademarks of the holiday ghost stories, a dark night, romance, feasting, and an evil spirit.

But it was the Irish immigrants who came to America in the 1820s and the 1840s and brought with them many of their old traditions and customs who started Halloween here. The Irish created jack-o-lanterns from turnips and beets. They quickly began using America’s much larger and easier to carve pumpkins for their spooky creations. As the Irish immigrants spread across the nation, their customs merged with existing activities but they gave them their own scary spin.

Victorians eagerly celebrated Halloween with elaborate parties involving costumes, food, and drink, dancing, and games. The haunted house dates back to this period. Victorian hostesses adorned their homes with spooky decorations to set the mood. It was in the 1920s that Halloween evolved into a children’s holiday with trick-or-treating. Because the pranks involved in the holiday escalated to a greater degree of damage, many communities banned the treat-or-treating part of Halloween. This evolved into cities creating community events to channel destructive energies into more peaceful channels.

Downtown Howe has been celebrating Howe-lloween as a community event for the last couple of years on the Saturday before the official Halloween date. I think it is a great coming together of the community including downtown merchants, the churches’ trunk-ortreat participation, music, and vendors. And the KHB ChiliCookoff is an added spicy bonus. Howe Mercantile is going to celebrate all day with a special storewide sale as well as a holiday market behind the store on the Cottonwood Creek Pavilion. Several of our dealers will set up tables of bargains. Our event will start at 10:00 in the morning and go all day and during the Howelloween event on Haning Street.