Spooky, spooky, Halloween!
The spooky season came to Paradise last week with our annual Paradise pumpkin carving competition for our office occupiers.
Marking the centuries-old tradition of All Hallow’s Eve, or the start of the feast of All Hallows, which originally dates from the eighth century as a period of remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, confessors and all of those departed.
This tradition merged over the centuries with different pagan harvest festivals and other folk festivals to mark the end of summer and the beginning of winter, until Halloween became the accepted festival for marking the end of the productive (growing and harvesting) part of the year, as well as remembering the dead.
The festival grew particularly strongly in Celtic cultures, and when Irish and Scots immigrants landed in north America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they took Halloween with them and the tradition took on a whole new lease of life.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Halloween gained popular traction thanks to films and other cultural references and the day’s symbolism – and popularity – now seems to grow year on year.
The Paradise team fully got into the spirit of the event by handing out 250 pumpkins to all of its office occupiers across the estate, along with chocolate treats. Staff were then invited to carve out their own interpretation of Halloween and enter our exclusive competition.
In total, 34 people submitted their own spook-tacular entries and a final was hosted at Albert’s Schloss last Thursday where judges Sandra Wade (PwC), Sharon Bhambra (MEPC) and Tom Fellows (Paradise Estate Team Manager) had the difficult task of choosing three winners.
After much deliberation, congratulations to Lee Overton from PwC for winning first prize with his creepy creation! Lee won a voucher, along with Gabriel Nelo from Dishoom, and Natalie Ellis from Knights for coming second and third respectively.
