What did you do for Halloween if you were an 80s/early 90s kid?

[90skid13]

If you were a child in the 80s/early 90s, what did Halloween look like for you?

Did you go trick or treating, carve a pumpkin? Was there a school disco, Where the houses decorated where you live?

We didn’t really celebrate Halloween but when I was a teenager it would be scary films and ghost stories.

In Northern Ireland Halloween was a big thing. No fireworks for obvious reasons! No costumes really either but everyone wore plastic masks, called false faces. No trick or treating but everyone had parties with apple bobbing, apple on a string, blind mans buff and so on. My granny cooked an apple pie with 5ps in it. Great times. This was the late 1970.s.

In the early 80s.we carved swedes which took up hours after school! (Link with photo examples:www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37786113) At Girl Guides we had a fancy dress competition, home made outfits with card/crepe paper accessories, if we were being fancy.

Then as teenagers our Sunday School Youth Club would have a not-halloween party without costumes but with silly games like ducking for apples and eating doughnuts without using our hands, and the doughnuts were suspended across the hall on a string.

Trick or treating was a thing that went in and out of fashion. I remember it was heavily shamed as 'begging' (by the chapel that sent round a collection basket every time we sat down, but hey ho!), there were also lots of scare stories about trick or treaters getting poisoned sweets or apples with razor blades in. My parents liked to have bags of sweets ready for the trick or treaters who knocked the door, and if we ran out they would get a handful of loose change.

We played duck apple, ate hotdogs and toffee apples and then went to grandparent's house dressed up in something like a bin bag cape and a mask. We weren't allowed to go knocking on strangers' doors and I don't remember it being a big thing that other kids did either. Maybe one or two. And no one would decorate their house or put pumpkins out until the evening of Halloween.

I was born in 1973 i think it was all mixed up with Bonfire night

We didnt do truck or treating but we dressed up and did apple bobbing etc.

80s NI and similar to @ilovepixiethe apple tarts with charms and we had sparklers and false faces made from plastic with eye holes that never quite lined up with actual eyes! We also had epic cardboard witches hats which never fitted right but looked amazing. The Apple on a string was brilliant!

I turned 16 in1981.
Halloween parties were very much a thing in the 70's (although back then they were still overshadowed by bonfire night, penny for the guy etc), I even remember an episode of Blue Peter showing you how to make spooky decorations, party food etc (red jelly in a rubber glove mould to make jelly hands has always stuck in my memory!).
Apple bobbing & toffee apples, red cordial, carving a small pumpkin (not the monsters we have nowadays) and pumpkin pie made from the insides.
I even went TorT once so that would be 79 or 80 for those that say it is a recent thing!

Nothing. My dad got mad about the trick or treating and yelled at the kids and a girl in my class threw flour at his newly varnished wooden door which made a right mess and was really wrong of her but I think if he’d just given her sweets it would’ve made life a lot easier!

My eldest sons grew up in the late 70's/80's. We didn't do anything for Halloween. it really wasn't a thing for us. Bonfire night was the big one for us.

We did exactly this! plus one year I had some plastic witches fingers with long nails. My brother had a pair of plastic vampire fangs. People near us didn’t tend to stock up on sweets so they would give you a bit of loose change. Good times! 🤣

Im in Australia, 80s kid. I remember having a dress up parade and a disco at school, and having a halloween party at girl guides.
Trick or treating wasnt common.
One thing noticeable now is that trick or treating is super popular in the Asian (chinese/ japanese/ korean) suburbs of my city. Which makes me chuckle when people carry on about it being American.

Absolutely nothing. My friend from up the road used to knock wearing a witch hat and we'd give them a kitkat from our packed lunch food cupboard.

Totally. Sausages, jacket potatoes and Bonfire Cake! A crumbled up pile of chocolate cake topped with chocolate sticks (after eight sticks maybe?) And sparklers in the back garden.

I was born 79. We went trick or treating in our bin bag costumes and sweaty plastic masks, they often had like green friizzy 'hair' attached to them. Only to the neighbours we knew, basically a group of kids going to each other's houses - loads of similarly aged children on our street. My dad would carve a sweede, I'm not sure I'd ever seen a pumpkin in real life until well into my teens!

I got nostalgic at the greengrocers the other day and contemplated getting a sweede for carving, but not sure I'm up to the job honestly. I did love the smell.

I also remember a few little parties with apple bobbing and games - one was the brownies or maybe youth club, and another at a friend's house.

Agree with a PP that bonfire night was the big one - we had a bonfire party at home one year and that patch of grass never recovered haha, it became mum's 'rose garden'. We'd also always go to an organised display.

All these pumpkins in the 80s? We never had pumpkins for sale where I grew up, we weren’t that cosmopolitan. We had to make do with a turnip that was nigh on impossible to carve and would smell like arse once it had a tealight in it.

Our costumes were the same every year - a bin bag and a cheap plastic mask from the post office that had eye holes so sharp they’d take your finger off. Also a witches hat made from card. Some years we might go off-piste and be a cat, but there was always a bin bag involved. Or some kids would just wrap themselves in toilet roll and be a mummy. Not very durable in the rain. A lucky few would have fancy extras like fake blood or Dracula teeth.

We did used to trick or treat, but most people would tell us to bugger off. We’d usually end up with a few sweets. We’d concoct wild punishments for any refusers, but we never enacted them because everyone knew who we were and we were too scared of our mums.

Afterwards we go home with our Chewits and Mojos and do duck apple in the washing up bowl. Happier times!

Yes to the holes in the sweede to carry it around, and yes to the plastic witch's fingers!

I don't think we got many sweets either, usually biscuits, satsumas, the odd 10p! We did have to do a 'trick' though - that seems to have died out! I remember doing little songs and jokes etc.

Nothing. American holiday in those days.

Absolutely nothing. It was a non-event for my siblings and I - and we cover quite a broad age range. I can't even recall any children in the local area dressing up either.

I was a child in the 70s and 80s and - nothing.

Bonfire night was a thing , we'd go to the big display at dad's work. Can remember apple bobbing at brownies and eating toffee apples. Can remember guys in wheelbarrows being wheeled around on the streets.

My 1st halloween party was in the 90s when I was an adult.

80s child. Used to go trick or treating and carve a pumpkin. Got loads one year and had to go back to drop some at home and my older cousins absolutely annihilated my stash... fun times!

I remember that bonfire night was the big thing with displays and bobbing apples, that sort of thing.
Halloween I did know some kids who tried trick or treating, but they're idea of a trick was knocking the bins over, it was frowned upon.
I never saw a real pumpkin until the nineties, but remember trying to carve a sugar beet once. Much harder than a suede, but sort of 'free' They grew in the field behind our house.

I had Scottish parents - we'd carve a turnip/swede - it was bloody hard work! But I don't remember trick or treaters or anything - that was early 80s. Halloween and trick or treat or fancy dress seemed very American. (ETA I don't think I saw a pumpkin till the 90s!).

Bonfire night was big though - we'd have fireworks in the back garden, apple dunking, toffee apples and a bonfire and the neighbours and their kids would come round.

Nothing, it wasn’t a thing at all in our area.

I'm a Scottish child of the 1960s. Halloween was quite a big deal and my friends and I would go guising round the nearby village. We had to recite a poem or sing a song to receive any rewards. We let our fireworks off on Halloween as it was much more important than Bonfire night and we'd dook for apples and do Halloween type activities at school.
We have these types of conversations on Mumsnet every year about American trick or treating but Samhain is an old Celtic festival, think it used to be Celtic New Year.

I had a similar experience to you op. Grew up in a loving home, had a great childhood- but parents largely ignored Halloween and fireworks night! Both my parents were brought up in very religious households, although not religious themselves, so I wonder if it’s a hangover from this?

I was born in the late 50s and never even realised what Hallowe’en meant. We certainly never had trick or treaters coming round. Like other people have said, bonfire night was the big celebration, with penny for the guy a couple of weeks before and then everyone had their own little firework display in the back garden or a slightly bigger one in a public area, but there were none of the huge expensive public displays that you get now. My daughter was born in the early 1990s, and by the time she got to about 9, some of her friends were going trick or treating, but I never allowed her to take part. We had very few trick or treaters knocking until about ten years ago, when hallowe’en seems to have become much more of a thing. But we always had celebrations on 31 October because it was my brother’s birthday, and we never associated it with hallowe’en at all