Crap halloween givers

[WashingAt30]

It's nice when someone opens the door to you, and they at least smile, and maybe have a little chat about the DC's costumes. My god, some people don't even look happy, just shove a bag of sweets at you as close the door! I wouldn't be surprised if one creepy man we met was on some kind of offenders register. Why bother if you're not going to get into the spirt?!

So none of our memories count and all that matters is what was on TV at the time? How bizarre! My children haven't watched any Halloween TV in their lives I don't think. We decorate and get dressed up, have a family party and go trick or treating, just as I did as a child. There's no time for TV!

I’ve done a bit of research and apparently ET in the 80s encouraged trick or treating and made it more of a thing here. I definitely remember trick or treating before that as a child though. To be fair I only recall us going trick or treating from when I was 6 or 7 or so, so 1976/77 onwards. There weren’t hordes of kids around though and Penny for the Guy for Guy Fawkes Night was more popular, lots of kids would make a guy out of old clothes and a hat and newspaper and collect money for fireworks either door to door or outside certain shops or places in town. I don’t see kids making guys now.

I think Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night are similar in popularity now from what I see as loads of kids do both, but as I said before there was always a cross over due to the dates inbetween.

I have no idea of how Scottish, northern England or Irish people celebrated Halloween as I’m from SE/SW London, but my stepdad is Irish. I can’t recall him actually saying anything about Halloween and how it was celebrated in Ireland.

As a PP said, yes the variety of what was on sale then was far less. You had fancy dress shops which sold Halloween costumes, and maybe in a toy shop and Woolworths you could buy basic costumes but a lot of us made them, including cardboard witches hats and white sheets for ghosts with holes cut out. There weren’t whole aisles in supermarkets dedicated to this. But you could definitely buy pumpkins and toffee apples in supermarkets or greengrocers.

This poster seems like some bizarre person. Is it disliking the English in disguise? Or making out the Irish are better than the English?

The joy of being able to Google is seeing how very selectively you edited that quote from the BBC

I won't bore everyone with an entire quote from the article but suffice as to say it comes from a BBC bitesize article about the ancient Welsh festival of Nos Galon Gaeaf and starts with the paragraph

The spooky traditions of Halloween are often associated with North America, but could the roots of those traditions lie closer to home than we think?
Most people are aware that Halloween’s origins lie in the northern European Celtic and pagan festival of Samhain. Fewer people are aware of the unique and macabre Welsh traditions of our very own that are precursors to what is now known as Halloween.

If you want to selectively edit and flat out lie to prove your point then you do that. Whatever makes you happy. The Welsh are used to people denying our history anyway.

My Dad is Irish he wss born and lived there untill.he was 11_I must ask how popular Halloween was in the 40,s and 50,s as I can't recall him.ever talking about it tbh.

I remember having a lecture from a teacher when I was in what would now be called year 5 about how trick or treating was a form of begging and we shouldn't do it. This was 1984. I'd never done it anyway, and I don't remember ever having any round to visit, and we lived in an estate full of kids. However we did have a Halloween disco at school where everyone dressed up, and we made pumpkin pie during the school day (disgusting!)

l only took my kids trick or treating once - as an autistic person knocking on strangers doors and asking for things is my idea of hell. However I don't mind handing out treats so always get some in, even if I don't know what to say to the kids who come to the door. Awkward! But they never seem to mind as long as they get a treat.

The point is one place got their activity direct from North America, the other (here) merely got an expression.

Bit of a difference, yes?

I'm 60 and from the south west of England. Halloween was almost nothing when i was a child. Our seasonal begging was restricted to making a guy and trailing it around in a broken pram shouting 'Penny for the guy'. Even once I became a parent in the late 90s, the modern trick-or-treat 'traditions' were only just making their way into England. People did it, but the shops weren't homing in on it as a chance to increase their profits. There weren't shop-bought Halloween costumes in the supermarket, or decorations, or an extra-enhanced choice of sweets for sale. Halloween wasn't referenced in adverts etc.

It is the commercialisation of Halloween that is new. The conversion of a small-scale home-made celebration (that some families and not others participated in) into a knee-jerk purchase of tat and sugar and pre-processed 'experiences'. Horrible. I was so relieved when my kids got too old for it and I could leave the pumpkin off the front doorstep so that precious little middle-class children wouldn't come traipsing round with their parents to collect Haribos off me.

Season 3 but since it was aired in 1960 you probably won’t be able to watch it online.
many other years had crafts around Halloween even if not billed as a special.

Now please source the Irish TV specials for us, please.

The point is that Nos Galon Gaeaf is recorded as far back as the 10th century and you are willing to lie to deny its existence which kind of renders all of your other foot stamping in the thread about how everyone is remembering wrong null and void

But you are obviously enjoying yourself so go have fun with your own special brand of denying others cultural heritage. Like I said the Welsh are used to it.

Again, people proclaiming what all of England was like based on their bubble.

I've literally never done penny for the guy, that was already very old fashioned when I was a child. And definitely went trick or treating and to parties both as a child and a young adult at uni and beyond and thought of Halloween as an event.

Did you want them to praise you for the costumes, then? Having to dole out sweets to your kids wasn't enough?

Didn't mean it to come across as dismissive.

I was aware of the Welsh festival but that connection goes much further back (as does souling). Guising (which is Scottish) is the secular version of souling (ie. no praying) and what kids do every Halloween when they go from door to door for grub (we've just added the phrase from Canada on top of it).

Your account correlates with the plethora of literature on the subject.

From a commercial standpoint, from my earliest memory in the mid 80s shopping centres here (N.Ireland) have been filled to the brim with Halloween stuff. When I was in England over a decade later I saw absolutely none of this. So yes, everything you've stated fits what I saw.

So.you memory of Halloween is ok
But those of us who also have many memories of Halloween is just anecdotal.and can't be trusted 🤔
Your being silly now 😂😂

I know
The mind boggles

I agree that Halloween is more commercialised now. No doubt about that.

But you’re suggesting it wasn't celebrated in England apart from perhaps tiny pockets connected to the Celtic traditions. It’s this which is demonstrably untrue. We were just, in the style of the time, much more creative. We made our own costumes out of cardboard and old clothes or sheets, we didn’t buy buckets for sweets but took a Tesco carrier bag. I remember my zombie outfit which was an old green t-shirt with fake blood on it from the joke shop, and my whole face coated in purple and green eyeshadow. We made ghosts out of tissue paper and witches out of toilet roll tubes, and stuck them in the window.

Again you’re ignoring the evidence others have provided in a frankly pig headed stubbornness that you are right and the rest of us are wrong, even though we are the ones who lived in England during this time and you did not 😂

I think actually, H’Ween was suppressed in England by the Protestant church.

‘The English, for the most part, stopped celebrating Halloween as Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation began to spread. As followers of the new religion did not believe in saints, they had no reason to celebrate the eve of All Saints' Day.’

https://www.history.com › topics
Halloween Around the World - Traditions, Celebrations & Activities

Catholics continued to follow the tradition as ‘All Saints Day’ and as far as I’m aware, still do.

Most people in England see it as ‘just a bit of fun’ and non secular. Some see it as Pagan (it probably is) - I think there was a post referring to a Celtic Welsh celebration. How lovely.

I think there has probably always been some sort of festival to ‘welcome’ winter (and perhaps to ward off death?). Interesting stuff.

Guy Fawkes was a Catholic so celebrating his being hung, drawn and quartered is pretty gruesome imo. But hey. Let’s have a few fireworks.

Guy Fawkes actually leapt from the scaffold so wasn’t hung, drawn and quartered, but his co-conspirators were.

I mean he leapt so was hung that way… I think.

All my stepdad ever mentioned was banshees! Not sure if that’s connected with Halloween.

The whole point of Guy Fawkes Night for us British as far as I was taught at school, was the gunpowder plot to blow up parliament. I can’t recall the religious aspect being that stayed to us, but the treason part was.

The night itself is a sort of lesson, but to all of us, we don’t really take it that seriously but yes, it’s an excuse to have fireworks and along with Halloween it’s a festival to brighten up cold and dreary winters.

Exactly. And although it was less commercialised so too were all the other similar festivals (Valentines, Christmas... ).

Oh wow! Did he? How Facinating!

I mean referring to Guy Fawkes leaping off the scaffold. I was once at a bonfir party in Hackney where they burned an effigy of the Houses of Parliament. I mean, I can unnerstan how that happened, but it’s not really how the night is meant to go ..!