5 Easy Gift Ideas For Your Halloween Gift Basket!

Halloween is incomplete without Halloween gifts and gift baskets. The unique thing about Halloween gifts are that they have got to be scary and ghoulish. Why so? In this article I will give you a little detail about the background of Halloween as well as some fun gift basket ideas you could try out for yourself!

It must be remembered that Halloween originally started as a pagan festival. Back then, it used to be celebrated by the Celts and was known as Samhain. The name Halloween derives its name from “All Hallows’ Day” as Halloween used to take place on All Hallows’ Eve.

As a matter of fact, Celts used to start their day differently than us; instead of sunrise, they used to begin their day after the sunset. That is why “Samhain” used to be celebrated on “All Hallows’ Eve”. All Hallows’ Eve is now celebrated a day after Halloween and is renamed as “All Saints’ Day”.

There is a reason why Celts celebrated Samhain. They used to believe that on the night of 31st October, ghosts of the dead come out from their graves, visit the mortal world and bring dangerous damages to the mortal world by infecting the mortals with diseases, damaging their houses and crops, etc.

That is the reason why on that day Celts used to paint their faces in soot to appear ghoulish to the spirits; they believed that this would be enough to scare the spirits away and thus the Celts would be safe from any harm! Later on masks were invented as a replacement to the face-paint. Now you know why people wear ghoulish and scary masks and make-up on the night of Halloween!

Coming back to gift baskets, there are lots of ways you can fill up a gift baskets. Traditionally, Halloween is associated with the “evil” spirits such as ghosts, goblins, vampires, witches, etc. It is also associated with certain birds and animals such as black cats, bats, spiders, cobwebs, scarecrows, etc., because of their frightening and dangerous appearances. Keeping that in mind, you can put some of the following things as gifts in your gift baskets:

a) Halloween candies or popcorns shaped in scary figures such as goblins, ghosts, witches, etc

b) A booklet or manual on how to carve a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin

c) Halloween scrapbooks. I usually paste Halloween invitation cards (or their cut-offs), party photos and other stuff associated with Halloween in those scrapbooks. It adds a personal touch to the scrapbooks and believe me, the recipients would feel it!

d) A flash light shaped in the form of pumpkin. This light can be of any color but the common preference for Halloween seems to be the orange colored mini-lights for they go very well with the color of pumpkin. Such lights can be used for decoration purposes!

e) Dress a robust black cat as a witch or goblin and put it in the basket. You can bet the recipients would get their shock of life as they open the gift basket!