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

I think you’ve tried to shoehorn a tragedy into a Mumsnet thread under the guise of something else, so you weren’t called out for wanting to gossip about it. Which is pathetic really.

Less traumatic than Easter 🤣

@SpoonHeader

Wait till you find out about Christmas.

It is. Some very offensive things posted tonight tbh, I'm surprised they're still going. Obviously got an axe to grind, which is a shame because it's an otherwise interesting discussion.

I appreciate the honesty of Bonfire Night. Everybody is upfront about the history.

Unlike certain Christian holidays.

Ah, thanks - I suspected they were trolling but it's hard to tell.

And Bonfire Night too!

I wouldn't get drawn in. This poster also believes those celebrating Diwali should just light a candle until Bonfire Night and enjoy thr fireworks for a completely different festival then.

They're either ignorant or stirring the pot because they're bored. Don't waste your energy.

Well, I believe it because it is is universally believed by historians.

The Catholic Church wanted to convert pagan populations and, as the Roman empire spread, it aligned its holidays with pre-existing festivals celebrated by the local populace.

Why do you think the Church moved All Saints Day from its original May 13 date?

I think they possibly would have.

I had that unfortunate bad luck to witness a similar incident many years ago. Someone passing came very very very close to picking up a body part as they thought it was a prop from a play or the like.

They vomited a lot when they realised it wasn't just a very realistic prop and, tbh, have never truly been completely the same since.

As a child in the 80s in England I appear to have had exactly the same experience of Halloween as you. It was definitely a thing.

Halloween was also huge in the US well before the Simpsons. Think about the film E.T.!

Why do you believe the universal church changed a date to fit with a specific British isles/celtic festival, why do you think it was all about here? Catholics are in many countries.

Explain what?

There are loads of festivals all over the world that are basically a temporary reversal of the normal order of things. Humans like novelty and boundary-breaking, especially the types where everything will be safely back to normal in a few hours....

The Catholic church wasn't limited to the British Isles in the 9th century, so how do you explain that?

Save your anger for the murderer perhaps?

Poor that man! I hope I'm never decapitated, but if I am, I don't want anyone to stop celebrating anything on my account. There's enough actual doom and gloom in the world (as you quite rightly pointed out OP), without stopping the fun things which provide a little respite.

Right like Easter isn't creepy, a man returning from the dead?
How about Valentine's Day - named after St Valentine. Do you know what happened to him?

Humanity has always been morbid- Halloween is a fairly healthy way of processing morbid curiosity.

There are no written records of Samhain that predate the existence of the Church, however, it is so well evidenced by Archeological evidence that Halloween's routes in Celtic tradition is not disputed by any serious historian.

The Catholics did their familiar trick of taking one of their new holidays (All Saints Day, originally in May) and moving it to coincide with a more established holiday, in a (very succesful) attempt at appropriating existing celbrations into its own mythology.

It was definitely a thing in the 60s/70s in England. We went guising, carved turnips and dooked for apples. Guy Fawkes is Bonfire night and unrelated.

Is anyone saying the Celts started the -now - global version of Halloween? Obviously it has been appropriated by the US & beyond - due to Irish immigration I imagine, and it has morphed into something bigger & has homogenised somewhat, with pumpkins etc.

When I was a child in 80s Ireland Halloween was a big thing. Homemade costumes (bin bags usually), 'false faces', monkey nuts, trick or treating, apple bobbing, apple tarts with coins in them, and truly terrifying turnips. We loved it. We were aware it wasn't a thing in England because English TV would talk about Guy Fawkes night which was obviously totally unrelated.

I remember Mark Riley on radio 6 say how he thought The Simpsons - because of their fantastic Tree house of Horror episodes - had a big part to play in the present day Halloween becoming popular in England & globally.

The reality of Halloween is children dressing up as dinosaurs and marvel characters and telling awful jokes about skeletons in return for a sweetie.

It's got nothing to do with a horrible accident in Edinburgh.

That's not true either. Up where I'm from the cultures very much overlap. Political borders that have changed over the centuries mean nothing. We are the same people genetically and linguistically and share the same cultural events.

The Catholic Church didn't invent Halloween. The Celts did.

It wasn't always called Halloween. It comes from Samhain, and it was appropriated. I'd suggest doing some research of your own because even my kids learn about this sort of thing in primary school.

I think the popularity of Halloween isn’t because we’re all desensitised it’s because we by and large are shielded from the horrors that can befall someone like never before. Hence those people assuming it to be a prop because they had no reason to think it was an actual human head.

There’s a great podcast called Painfortainment by Dan Carlin that explores the history of torture essentially and he theorises that for millennia we were far more blood thirsty and accepting and capable of violence. Because society has shifted and we no longer see public executions/witch burnings etc etc we like to scare ourselves with horror movies and haunted houses. It’s fun because we don’t know what actual real life horror is.