TW...to think celebrating Halloween and horror is outrageous

I'm sorry but it didn't. Saying that it's exclusively Irish/Scottish ignores our history in certain parts of the country. Our culture descends modern borders.

Imagine me, an Irish person, telling an English person about the history of Morris Dancing or cricket or (insert another very English custom not marked in Ireland).

We get this nonsense from the English every Halloween on here. You know zip about Halloween.

As British we are too scared to talk about Death anyway

We will all die. We need to be able to talk frankly and openly about that and not treat death as something dirty or secret or scary. There is nothing scary about a coffin or gravestone except for the reminder of mortality. Past generations were far more open to this being present, think Memento Mori.

Hangings, burning at the stake, beheadings... all used to be public events. Things people would travel to watch. Actual horror. Not fake bloody and CGI.

Some people get their adrenaline rush from rollercoasters, some from extreme sports, some from horror movies.

The event in Edinburgh was tragic. And those men who found the head will probably have nightmares for weeks after finding it was real. But it doesn't mean Halloween is wicked or evil or should be banned

(And that's without getting into the historical aspect which has been well covered already)

Halloween stopped in England as the anti catholic November 5th custom supplanted it.

This didn't happen in Scotland as the Kirk (church) maintained the tradition there, and obviously Ireland wasn't going to mark November 5th. Hence, Halloween has been an exclusively Irish/Scottish custom since, and they developed it into a secular (ie. non religious) custom.

Excellently put. There's also some proof going even further back in Ireland of "mumming" (in the early modern period? I can't remember), which was similar to going round the doors/guising. I'd have to go searching to dig up the dates now, but I'll try and find 'em tomorrow! Really fascinating how it's evolved.

I inadvertently fed the troll for a while, but you're welcome to take over. It's making nonsensical and ahistorical arguments about the origins of Halloween.

What I think its trying to argue here is that because All Saints Day is a Catholic "Holy Day" then, therefore, Samhain never existed.

If that sounds really stupid and nonsensical to you, that's because it is.

I'm not disagreeing about the church stuff but I'm in England ( north) and we also went guising. It wasn't restricted to the Scots ( or Irish), indeed most of our customs are shared.

We get this ignorance every Halloween on here (largely as its predominantly English posters on here).

Halloween, as celebrated today, is a secular Irish/Scottish custom. All of it.

Minor details such as swapping a pumpkin (US) for a turnip (which I carved), and saying "trick or treat" (a phrase from Canada) rather than the numerous interjections that preceded it, are the only changes from the Halloween of my youth, and my parents, and their parents.

Guisers from 1890 in Ayr, Scotland;

"I had mind it was Halloween . . . the wee boys were at it already, running about with their false faces on and their bits o’ turnip lanterns in their hand."

*False faces is what we in Ireland (and Scotland) call masks.

Guising is then first recorded in North America in 1911 (Irish/Scottish migration), in Ontario, Canada, the same province where 6 years later today's most common interjection "trick or treat" was first used.

Back to The Irish Times (from 2014)

"The expression trick or treat has only been used at front doors for the last 10 to 15 years. Before that "Help the Halloween Party" seems to have been the most popular phrase to holler."

And regards pranks, ghosts etc, this has been recorded at Halloween here for over two centuries. Scottish poet John Mayne from 1780: "What fearfu' pranks ensue".

Who was Jack in this context? I'm not aware of any Saint Jacks...

Yeah the OP reads in a very pearl-clutchy Helen Lovejoy 'won't someone think of the children?!' manner.
Unnecessary histrionics.

*Sweet

Wait until people hear of the story of "Sqeet Fanny Addams".

God, that is SO rude!

Tell me more, @Spoonheader. What kind of Halloween did you celebrate? And who was holy previously?

It is gory when you think about it, but I think people just want a bit of fun. Horror has always been part of stories, including children's stories. Remember the Ugly Sister cutting off her heel to fit into Cinderella's glass slipper?

Bore off you weirdo.

I stick by my first post. Halloween was a three day event. I note there has been no ancient answer to who was Holy previously?

Christmas, Easter and Valentines Day are all about money.

The worst aspects about modern gardens, falsely blamed on the domestic cat, are patios and fake grass. Literally, modern gardens and their designs is what is killing birds and insects.

There is nothing more wrong about Halloween than any of the others. But only Hallow seems to receive this vitriol - don't know why.

Are some people unaccpeting of their own mortality, perhaps?

The Irish Times is 164 years old and it has only briefly once allowed a woman to be editor, it is currently bashing Catholics for misogyny.

I gather the first Catholic editor did not happen until the 1980s.

The Edinburgh incident sounds truly appalling, I'd not heard about it.

I like the old fashioned halloween - ghosts, pumpkins, apple bobbing, tricks or treat.

I dislike the 'horror'ification of it ie gore, chain sawed heads, dripping blood etc. I hate windows decorated with fake blood handprints and 'help me' written in blood etc. Too close to real events eg Joseph Fritzel etc. My dc are young and it's frightening. My eldest dc won't look at the Halloween aisle in the supermarket with scary costumes on it. All too much.

Fun for kids but personally don't like it.. skeletons coming out of coffins ..horrible and that white cotton wool stuff peeps put on their gardens can trap birds & insects..

Feel it's migrated from America and is all about 🤑

I didn't realize there was any suggestion of murder?

Wrong.

One thing that gets on my wick is an ignorant foreigner talking about someone else's culture, and getting it wrong.

The secular aspect of Halloween is from the Irish and Scots (guising, kids going from door to door). Souling is the religious practice (once done by the English).

From The Irish Times:

"When the Catholic Church arrived they were keen on stamping out all the old Celtic traditions, so they changed the festival name and called it their own. Samhain became All Soul’s Day or All Hallows Day, and the day before became All Hallows Eve, which eventually shortened to Halloween.

On this now Christian holiday for honouring the dead, poor people would go from house to house begging for the delicious sounding ‘soul cake’ in exchange for prayers for deceased relatives. This was known as ‘souling’.

A few decades later a practice called ‘guising’ was in full swing in Scotland and Ireland. Short for ‘disguising’, children would go out from door to door dressed in costume and rather than pledging to pray, they would tell a joke, sing a song or perform another sort of “trick” in exchange for food or money."

Guising is what every kid does at Halloween. The phrase (or interjection) said at the door is then added on top of guising.

And using a pumpkin rather than a turnip (which I had used) is a minor substitution. The practice of carving scary faces on a vegetable is the custom.

It was an accident

Also this exactly

This. OP What you've described sounds like a massive fuck up for those involved.
Halloween is mainly based around kids. It's fun and harmless. It always has been for kids. They're not going to pick up a decapitated head and jolly about with it.
Also, some of us adults enjoy the spooky season. Which is equally okay. We're not summoning Hitler on Ouija boards.
This example was vile and unusual. Things like that don’t happen every year.
Again, it's mainly about kids dressing up, trick or treating and having decorations up.
Can you not separate the two?
There are teenage or younger balaclava'd idiots wreaking havoc up and down the country on a daily basis for a very long time now - smashing people's windows, physically attacking adults in the streets, intimidating, stealing, even setting houses on fire and the police won't come out. Now that is fucking scary. You can't draw a line between one thing you've posted about given the weight of the rest of life.