Was Halloween a big thing when you were growing up?

[BiggyJ]

As in - did you carve pumpkins/turnips, go Trick or Treating, have themed parties etc?
I can't say I did, or can't recall it being a big deal as it is now for my own teen DCs.

(Born mid 70s so was a kid during the 80s )

No, definitely not! Virtually no mention of Halloween. I grew up 60s/70s in SE England. Bonfire Night was always the big thing. Every year we walked to the big firework display in town. It was so exciting!

Only in my select group of friends/family. As in about 5 of us.

We would go trick or treating and in the 70s/80s it was almost unheard of. We only visited friends or neighbours houses and would be given something like a packet of Rich Tea, a bag of crisps and about seven 10p pieces to share amongst us. We would never have dreamed of doing a trick .

We thought it was great fun.

Yes it was big and it still is.

Scotland and we guising. Not trick or treating.

The main differences were when I was a child and I went out guising - when you knocked on a door you'd go into that persons house and perform a party piece in the living room.

You'd then receive an apple and some monkey nuts. Chocolate occasionally and sometimes money.

In some houses there would be games set up like dooking for apples.

Of course now we don't let our unaccompanied children go into the homes of strangers.

The guisers just knock on the door and tell you a joke.

Same age as you, and it wasn't a big thing where I was; no trick or treating or decorations. I think one year we dressed up as witches (using my mum's clothes) and I vaguely remember doing apple bobbing another year, but all that was just in the house.

We made more of a thing of bonfire night.

We had Halloween parties but when you were a kid were you fully up to date with what everyone around the country was doing?

I grew up in the 80s/early 90s in the south-east. We didn't really do trick-or-treating but we definitely did a lot of Halloween-related stuff. I remember doing Halloween art and craft projects at school and going to kids' Halloween discos when I was younger, and then when I was a teenager my four closest friends and I always used to gather at my house on Halloween (I was into gothic stuff so my bedroom was the ideal venue) to watch a couple of horror films, play spooky games etc, maybe all sleep over if it was a weekend.

I was born in late 60s, kid in the 70s and grew up in the English Midlands.

Halloween wasn't a thing at all when I was growing up. Old traditions had largely died out (I went to one Halloween party throughout my childhood and all I remember of it is bobbing for apples) and the modern stuff hadn't started.

I didn't go trick or treating and didn't know anyone who did. I never saw a house that was decorated for Halloween (apart from when I saw the film ET).

53 and grew up in Yorkshire. We had mischief night the day before Hallowe'en, I think it was.

The Hallowe'en that we know today seemed to emerge in late 1980s.

Yes Halloween was a huge thing when I was a child in the 80s and it was a thing for my parents and grandparents my dad used to card a turnip and we’d have to learn a turn for going out for our galoshins while dressed up then we’d be home for a wee party with dookin for apples and treacle covered drop scones tied to the pulley and then my dad would tell ghost stories in front of the fire and we’d eat the brack my mother had made to my grans recipe.

I’m Scottish with an Irish father, it’s our festival that others have taken and commercialised it’s always been a thing here and in Ireland.

I’m guessing that you’re English, OP?
Its always been a big thing in Scotland. The English didn’t take it up as much until it you saw the Americans doing it in movies. But guising and turnip carving was always big up here.

Nope, not at all. Child of the 70s. Mum put some apples in a washing up bowl and we bobbed for apples, and that was about it! Oh and she made a couple of toffee apples. Guy Fawkes was the bigger event, with penny for a guy and bonfires.

Everybody wore binbags and face paint (probably out of dm's makeup bag), odd accessories like vampire fangs, a supermarket carrier bag (when they were free and flimsy) 😂. There were no fabric costumes, unless somebody's dm had been really creative, this was seen as "posh", and they were the envy of all of the binbag clad kids. Scary allowed only, not like today.

Sometimes, the occasional group of teenagers would darken the doorstep, which dm, of course, would swiftly send on their way, telling them they were "too old."
Then there were kids who weren't dressed up. The houses they visited were vocal about "not being dressed up enough." Apple bobbing at the neighbours house and then off on our way with a torch, sometimes a "turnip" (really a swede) with a candle in. 🤣 That was the life! We never knew what we had gotten as it was really dark. Excitedly tipping our bags out there was always quite an assortment of wrapped, and unwrapped sweets, toffees, satsumas, money, some pound coins, some random items out of cupboards as well I'm sure. All of the houses were in darkness, no solar lights or decorations then, very few outdoor lights.

Pumpkins weren't available. This was the 90s and UK.

I agree about bonfire night being a bigger event than it is now. A little kid knocking every year for a penny for a guy without fail, bonfires, and fireworks displays with bovril from the food van, sparklers in a carrot. I loved it, those were the days!

Yes...but I'm old and Scottish.

As well as guising, we had parties where we went dookin for apples and engaged with treacle scones. Neep/Swede lanterns in those days.

No. Trick or treating was unheard of when I was a child. Some people had halloween parties, with apple dunking etc but I never went to any.

By the time my own children were children I had heard of it (mostly from watching the film ET!), but it definitely wasn't "a thing" in my part of England (West Midlands).

It was probably some time during the mid to late 1990s when I started seeing halloween masks and pumpkins in shops - and one year we actually had some children in fancy dress ring the doorbell on the evening of October 31st, trick or treating. That continued for a couple of years but when those children grew up, it stopped.

Not at all. London, 1960s childhood. Guy Fawkes was the big thing.

Yes! Home counties, so just about as boring as you can get 😉
I am loving reading everyone's experiences of it though.
Fascinating, and a teensy bit jealous!

Agree with PPs saying bonfire night was a much bigger deal around our parts.

Yes definitely.
I’m the youngest of my siblings and cousins and I’m 40. Nobody put pumpkins out, we literally knocked on every door we could before we grew tired. We got money, fruit, chocolate biscuits, packets of crisps.. it was brilliant. Then a couple of days later, we’d rinse all the same houses, knocking on for Penny for the Guy.

We’d do carolling at Christmas too. Anything to get some freebies!

My mum ‘didn’t agree’ with Halloween so we were never allowed to celebrate it but I remember other kids trick or treating and the shops selling costumes etc. This was in the 90s.

For me the things that have changed is the cost. Outfits used to be home-made and cheap.
And people didn't decorate houses, light left on was enough.
Neeps were carried on a string.

Bin bag witches, cardboard boxes would become any sort of cube, Oxo, rubix, dice. Tin foil aliens, Toilet roll ghosts. Or ghosts from a sheet. Were the sort of normal.

My favourite outfit from childhood was a teddy bear, my jacket turned inside out to show its furry lining, a pair of furry boots and a false face.

I remember a friend being a sheet of music, old sheet with head hole and painted.

Old clothes could become all sorts of things, chimney sweep, little bo peep and a toy sheep.

School, church and girls brigade did parties

I was born in 1979, so an 80s kid. Our estate had a Halloween disco each year, we all dressed up. Did trick or treating too. Houses didn’t really do decorations though.

?

Absolutely not (child in London in the 1950s - we had penny for the guy and Guy Fawkes Night with bonfires to burn the guy on and fireworks). Even when DDs were young in the 80s Halloween wasn't as huge a thing as it is now.

We went trick or treating in the mid 90s - there was one Halloween pop up stand in the local shop, I'd wear my mums long black skirt, a cardboard witches hat and some of those plastic fingers with the red nails that used to make your fingers go numb!

Late 90s onwards for us Halloween was big in bars/clubs with themes, decorations and usually a pair of horns and a sexy outfit!

We'd been watching horror movies since young, especially the Halloween films so that's how we really new about it.

No, not at all. Born 1980 and never did anything for Halloween.

I didn’t either! ‘90s kid here, I wasn’t allowed to go trick or treating (I knew other kids who did though), I don’t really remember seeing carved pumpkins about much. I think it’s since we’re all online all the damn time now and American TV/culture has had even more influence than it previously did. Halloween was never a particularly British thing. I used to be more excited about Bonfire Night as a kid!