October Stories: Spelling Lesson
An anonymous commenter asks, "Why do u spell Halloween that way? :(". It's a valid question, so here are two answers.
Long answer: The original name of the holiday as celebrated today is All Hallows Evening, the night before All Saints (or Hallows) Day. As time passed the name became shorter, and during the early golden age of Hallowe'en (1895–1935) had been shorted to All Hallows Even, then Hallows E'en, then Hallowe'en. In the latter part of the golden age the name started to lose its apostrophe, and has now been settled for a while at Halloween. However, since I am a bit of a traditionalist, I use the more archaic spelling.
Short answer: It's a pointless affectation. So sue me.
3 Comments:
Smart assy answer -- "Possibly for the same reason you replace 'you' with the single letter 'u' -- because I think it's cool."
I didn't know this!
LOL! I like the short answer. I knew about All Hallows Eve, but didn't know about the other abbreviations. Thanks for the history lesson.
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