By Jill K. Applegate

The holiday season is approaching fast. To get you into the spooky and spicy spirit, I looked backward and forward to get the scoop on Halloween and Thanksgiving—how we celebrate, how we spread the holiday joy, and how we got the idea in the first place.

Spooky New Year

The early Celts’ calendar believed that on the night before the new year dawned, on Nov. 1, the boundary between the living world and the world of the dead could be crossed more easily. They celebrated the harvest, wore costumes of animal heads and skins, and told each other’s fortunes for the coming year.

Roman to the Core

One of the celebrations that was eventually rolled into Halloween was in honor of Roman goddess of fruit and trees, Pomona. Her symbol is the apple, and History.com suggests that apple-bobbing originated in her honor.

Importing Tradition

In the late 1800s, an immigrant influx to the U.S. helped spread Halloween celebrations. Kids and adults dressed up in costumes and went house to house asking for a treat—food or money. Hanging onto the Celtic fortune-telling tradition, young women believed that on Halloween they could find out their romantic fortunes by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.

Halloween Doggie Bag

You won’t do your furry monster any favors by trading in the Milk Bones for milk chocolate treats. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has a well-timed reminder that chocolate is poisonous to a lot of animals, and tin foil and cellophane candy wrappers can be dangerous if swallowed. And even your brilliant pooch probably hasn’t figured out how to get the wrapper off, yet.

Harvest Bounty

First the tomato, now the pumpkin—yet another vegetable debunked. According to the History Channel, pumpkins are actually fruits. The largest pumpkin pie ever was baked in 2005 and it weighed more than 2,000 lbs. That’ll send you into an epic Thanksgiving nap!

Sending Thanks

Looking for a way to put the giving back into Thanksgiving? If you act quickly, you still have time to get a Thanksgiving care package to a soldier in the Middle East—packages can take a month to reach their destination. Fill up a box with items that remind your soldier of home and the people who love him or her. Include cookies in Thanksgiving shapes and flavors, kids drawings, and even a foam football so he can recreate the family’s traditional Turkey Bowl scrimmage. You could add a little pumpkin pie spice to the box for the aroma of home cooking. Operation Military Pride advises you to be creative, but think about what may melt or leak—and put those items in a zipper plastic back for extra assurance. If you want to make a soldier feel at home, but you don’t have family or friends serving, go to operationmilitarypride.org and the folks there will send you the name and address of an appreciative troop. You’ll also find ideas, restrictions, and mailing tips on the site.