What we now celebrate as Halloween was originally All Hallows Eve which was the eve of All Saints/All Souls which was a christianization of the ancient feast of Samhain or the pagan new year. Many of our modern customs and traditions have ancient roots as well. In medeival Europe the last few warm days before winter after the harvest was brought in was a good time for children of impoverished households to go around begging for food from those more fortunate. It was also a good time to play innocent pranks on the unsuspecting. One popular trick was to coat the insides of animal intestines (which were used as sausage casings) with a red-brown paste made from evaporated stock, and then inflate them with air and tie them off as sausages. It was said that inflated sausage casings thus prepared resembled the finest ground sausage-meat of Frankfort or Vienna, but of course had nothing but air inside. It is not known whether any of the begging children were actually fooled, but we can say that these empty sausages were the orig... (more to follow)
It is not known whether any of the begging children were actually fooled, but we can say that these empty sausages were the original "hollow wieners".
