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.

My dad would make a "neepie lantern" for us, such hard work!! And we'd go guising, just round people we knew, you'd come home with a few £s, monkey nuts and sweets!

Used to do parties at Brownies etc where we dressed up and dooked for apples!

Costumes were homemade, black bag witch costumes, awful hard plastic masks! I was a headless ghost one year, St Trinians student another.

Bin bag with a hole in it, paper witch’s hat, broom made of twigs, went round to my Nanna’s in the next street with my turnip lantern and got given 10p. I remember bobbing for apples a few times at youth club.

Most years absolutely nothing. It wasn't a thing.

As a kid I'd carve a mangle or fodderbeet (like a big turnip or swede we used to feed to the animals). They were a bad shape for it so would be a right mess. Not as much as the mess wgan I carved a big beetroot though 😁

Mum used to carve out a turnip lantern, very hard work. Didn't see pumpkin lanterns till we moved down south

I loved Halloween! We'd carve a basic zig-zaggy grin face on a pumpkin, and dry out the seeds for our pet gerbils. We'd make 'toads-eyes' sweets (marzipan dyed green with food colouring, rolled into balls and then a glace cherry pushed into each one) and bob for apples in the washing up bowl on the kitchen floor. We also played a very messy game where we had to mix a £1 coin into a pudding bowl of flour. My mum turned the flour out on a plate so it was in a neat mound, then we all took turn in cutting a slice. Whoever cut the slice that exposed the coin had to put their hands behind their back and plunge their face into the flour and pick it up in their teeth! I've no idea where that game came from but it was the cause of much hilarity. My favourite part of Halloween was the witches den though. We'd dress up in our little witch outfits and build a spooky den in the corner of the playroom. My dad swapped out the bulbs in the standed lamp for coloured ones, red I think, which added to the ambience, and played spooky records. We had a cauldron and various props (cuddly cats and rubber mice and things) and made 'spells' with torn up coloured paper. It was so much fun.

I am a late 80s born. We did celebrate it but it was low key compared to today's standards. Costumes were basic, bin bags and normally a witches hat and fingers ! We did trick or treating but only on the street we lived. No decorations other than 1 carved pumpkin each

Another one whose parents didn't approve. My mother is from another country and was aghast at parents allowing their children to go around to strangers' houses "begging", as she saw it.

I'm from the North West, and it was a very much 'a thing' here when I was growing up, definitely influenced by Celtic connections (the turnips/ sweedes etc) I think. My siblings are a decade or more older than me and they don't remember the trick or treating so much, but did do the turnips and the apple bobbing, and there was a big bonfire night/ 'penny for the guy' crossover for them (still for me a bit I think).

Liverpool and parts of Yorkshire also had (still have?) something called 'Mischief Night' or 'Mizzy night' around the same time - some places 30th October and some 4th November.

Also links to older traditions -

'Souling' - www.english-heritage.org.uk/halloween/soul-cakes/

'Nutcrack night' - https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.com/blog/origins-and-traditions-of-halloween

I find this stuff really fascinating! Of course it's all become very commercialised, as has everything, but I love the way it links us back to ancient, or at least much older, customs.

You know it’s really tiring to have to say this in MN every year. Just because England doesn't traditionally celebrate Halloween doesn’t make it American.

It’s a very old celtic tradition. I’m Scottish born the 1970s but my parents (born in the 1940s) and their parents born in the 1910s all celebrated Halloween as children.

In the 70s and 80s we used turnips not pumpkins, had home made costumes and went door to door “guising” (we don’t call it trick or treating in Scotland.)

We would be given peanuts in their shells, oranges and apples, copper pennies and occasionally a sweetie. You had to do a party piece first though, usually a joke or poem or a song.

It’s not that different now expect costumes are more elaborate and we use pumpkins (easier to carve).

When I was young we had Halloween parties at school, Sunday school and Brownies/Guides with bobbing for apples, swinging scones dipped in treacle etc etc.

DDs are of that era, and they certainly did go T or T-ing with other local kids. They would be dressed up, and I’d have a lit-up pumpkin on the doorstep, but no other decorations - the shops weren’t heaving with all the black and orange tat they have now.

I do recall doing one Halloween party, but I think we were still in the M East. I seem to remember some game where the kids were blindfolded, and had to put their hands in a bowl of ‘intestines’ (fat noodles) and eyeballs (peeled lychees or similar.) 🎃😈

Carved turnip, wore a bin bag, had to do something to get the treat like sing and apple bobbing.

The moved to England and got scared the trick seemed to be throwing eggs at houses if they didnt give you sweets and my parents wouldn't let me go anymore.

But actually bonfire night was big in both places I lived and arguably bigger. We had a fair travel to the village for bonfire.

As a young child in the 80s nobody went trick or treating where I lived, but we always did Halloween activities at school and at Brownies. I remember doing numerous Halloween art and craft activities at school, and sometimes there was a Halloween party/fair/fete type thing at my primary school with games and fancy dress and stuff and a barbecue. It was after school in the evening and it always seemed really exciting because it was dark. And there was a stall where you could buy toffee apples, Halloween themed sweets and cakes sometimes cheap pocket money type toys like rubber spiders and skeleton keyrings and glow-in-the-dark bouncy balls.

When I was a teenager my group of friends always used to gather at my house for Halloween because I was a massive horror fan. I had a huge collection of horror VHS tapes and loads of gothic/horror/spooky stuff in my room - I had lots of skull ornaments, candlesticks, creepy figurines, cuddly bats and rats, that kind of thing. So we used to carve a pumpkin, eat junk and then watch something scary by candlelight on my portable telly.

Nothing. It was all about bonfire night and penny for the guy.

I don't think you'll get an accurate picture from these answers without first establishing where in the country all the posters are from. It's already been said further up the thread that it was big in Celtic areas.

I grew up in West Central Scotland and what is now referred to as Trick or Treating was then called Guising. We'd go round the doors and at each one we'd chorus "The sky is blue, the grass is green. May we have our Halloween." At which point we'd all be required to tell a joke or sing a little song before being given some combination of monkey nuts, a satsuma and some penny sweets.

And another poster is also correct in that pumpkins weren't readily available in those days. We carved turnip/swede (somehow!). To note, most of the time Scottish and English people name those vegetables the opposite way around. We carved the larger purple one, not the tiny white one!

Nothing. We drew the curtains and stayed at the back of the house because ‘Trick or Treaters’ focused on the Trick and often did nasty things when you opened the door. And if the house looked occupied and you did not answer the door, they egged the house. I’m just glad that nothing was ever put through our letter slot, unlike what happened to some of our neighbours.

Dressed up to go trick or treating (guising). We would have to tell a joke to get the sweeties.

School would also regularly have a Halloween disco.

Brownies would do games like bobbing for apples or making toffee apples.

Never did carve a pumpkin but not sure why!

I have memories of trick or treating along the road we lived in until about 1987, so Halloween 86 at the latest!

we didn’t do a pumpkin, I have a memory they were expensive, but then it could just be my mum would not have bought a vegetable with no intention of anyone eating it!

it was one of those streets with lots of young families and I remember lots of kids running about in costumes, generally home made. Witch and ghost heavy, you weren’t just doing fancy dress!

Bonfire night was a bigger event though, most people did parties at home there was no big fireworks display that you paid for near us. Our garden then was tiny, but in the 80s no one seemed all that fussed about firework safety, other than telling you to put your jeans over your wellies, not tucked in so fireworks wouldn’t go down your wellies. And that you didn’t pick up a sparkler again after it had gone out. Obviously children would just be trusted with this information and left to play with the sparklers with minimal parental supervision.

I grew up in the west of Scotland and, similar to PP comments, Halloween was a big deal! Homemade costumes, carved turnips and guising. We visited neighbours and were required to do a "party piece" before we would get any sweeties. Though we usually got tangerines, sweeties and monkey nuts.

Interestingly, the town of Kilmarnock always celebrates Halloween on the last Friday of October, so not always the 31st. No-one is sure why, some historians think it's because the last Friday was payday, so enterprising children reckoned they'd get better sweets!

Halloween originated in Ireland.

I’m in NI. In the seventies (so a bit earlier than the 80’s obv) we used to dress up and go round and sing at the poor neighbours, who gave us a few coins. We also had apple tart with a wrapped up ring and a wrapped up coin hidden inside, which referenced marriage and riches. We carved turnip lanterns (well our dads did, maybe some mums, but it was the 70’s😅) and had sparklers and fireworks. We also bobbed for apples. It was great fun.

Edited to say we ate loads of nuts. The nutcrackers came out to shell brazils, hazelnuts and walnuts. And there were loads of monkey nuts,

In Scotland we claim it originated here. I think it's really just that it came from the Celtic festival of Samhain which would have been celebrated in Ireland and Scotland.

I was born in the late 80s in Scotland and it was a big deal here. We would have parties where we would bob for apples, eat treacle toast or jammy doughnuts off a washing line with our hands behind our backs. We would go guising and carve neeps or pumpkins. My mum would go all out on making our costumes for scratch each year. It's only now as a parent myself that I realise how much effort it must have taken her to make 3 outfits every year for myself and my 2 siblings, hand sewn because we didn't have a sewing machine, while she also worked full time.

We called trick or treating guising. We had to do a 'party piece' of a song or dance or joke to get our treats from people. People would hand out sweets or apples and tangerines and monkey nuts. If you were really lucky someone might have forgotten it was Halloween or run out of sweets and give you money instead. One time a guy a couple of streets down had found out his wife was cheating on him so he was handing out all her CDs to the kids. Word quickly got out and his front door had a queue of kids running out his garden!

We didn’t have any neighbours so no trick or treating but I remember carving pumpkins and dressing up in a black bin bag and wearing those plastic witch fingers so I must’ve gone to some sort of Halloween party. My dad also used to run around in the garden with a white bed sheet over his head to scare us all and my mum made jacket potatoes and hot dogs. Brilliant memories

Bin bag costumes and a purchased mask. Trick or treating and usually got a couple of quid each as well as sweets. Can’t remember Halloween discos at school but definitely did Halloween themed colouring. Some years the local pub would put on something and we would bob for apples and run riot in the pub garden. Cant remember ever carving a pumpkin but I’m sure my mom would tell me different! Watching my Hocus Pocus VHS on repeat all month. Lovely memories of Halloween as a kid, as well as bonfire night.

Bit earlier, late 60’s / early 70’s . Halloween was barely a thing except for the Brownies party ! Found an old photo of one of mine recently, all the girls lined up, literally half were ghosts with sheets over their heads, and the other half were witches. I remember really enjoying it although I don’t remember what we actually did.

We carved a pumpkin and did apple bobbing and maybe dressed up as witches when I was little. I think that was about it. We might have had the odd trick or treater coming round. I don’t remember pumpkin patches or Halloween in general being such a big thing then.

Nothing. It wasn’t really a thing in England.