AIBU to be completely pissed off with Halloween?

[inabizzlefam]

Since when did we (the UK) start "celebrating Halloween?
Isn't it some weird american tradition?
I get Bonfire Night, fireworks, Penny for the Guy, etc, but all this Halloween shit everywhere (TV, supermarkets,etc) is seriously pissing me off. As if we don't have enough on with christmas decorations in the shops........in October, FFS.
To cap it all I now find myself being nagged senseless by my DCs to take them Trick or Treating, which I loathe. The joy in traipsing round the neighbourhood in the dark, freezing cold, bored shitless, knocking on peoples doors, "begging" sweets off them is ludicrous......I could buy a huge tub of sweets for my own DCs and get to sit in my nice warm house, not pissing off my neigbours....everyone's a winner. Neighbours get left in peace and DCs get to stuff themselves full of crap.
Apparantly, I am being a killjoy and "not entering into the spirit of the celebration".
What celebration? It's a bloody american celebration. What next, Thanksgiving? (TBH I have no idea what thats all about either....2 christmas dinners?

You try knocking random doors anyother night saying 'give me sweets or I'll throw rotten eggs at you' - wouldn't go down very well would it?
I just hate that people think it's ok to knock on unlighted non decorated houses and then moan when they don't get sweets!

I'm 46 with grown up children aged 23 and 19, we have always celebrated Halloween, so did our neighbours and friends. I've lived in the North and the South, I haven noticed regional differences.
Not unless as a family we just always happen to end up in Village of the Damned or The Wicker Man type communities

Well, yes, in the same way that you don't don't expect people to turn up with gifts every time you roast meat, just when it's Christmas, or expect all your guests to stay up until midnight and sing Auld Lang Syne every time they visit.

I was brought up on horror films (the milder sort, can't be doing with slasher movies or zombie apocalypses) and the DC still love gruesome things. I'd have no problem at all with Hallowe'en if it weren't for the antisocial behaviour it inspires in the usual suspects. I think that's what most people have a problem with and it is somewhat dependent on the area you live in. I grumble about this every year, I believe, but one year we went out to get some sweets for that very purpose, and returned long before dark to find our house had already been egged for the heinous crime of us not being in when they came a-knocking. I've taken the solemn oath not to give any of the poisonous little buggers a bean ever since (even though the ones who did it probably have their own children by now). Harsh, maybe. Sue me.

I think that the Halloween haters and the Halloween lovers see things very differently.

Halloween haters feel forced into offering sweets by gangs of small children.

Halloween lovers feel part of a tradition, and are playing the grown-up role of giver, having been receivers in their own childhood. I was so sad when I first moved to England and bought lots of sweets and nobody trick or treated me. If you are a Haloween lover, it feels like a proper community festival in a way that Christmas doesn't.

It's about going out at night when you would normally be shut in and isolated and visiting all of your neighbours instead.

It's about making light literally just at the point of the year when the darkness seems to be taking over.

It's about making light metaphorically, by taking the things that frighten us (monsters etc for children, and death for adults) and acknowledging them, but lightly, and remembering that they are part of life.

And if you celebrate it as a religious festival, it's a time to remember your literal and spiritual ancestors, and think of them.

Nobody minds people having a bit if fun, but when people make a nuisance of themselves it's not fun for anybody else. I dread Halloween, why on earth would I want to open my door to strangers all dressed up, who could quite easily attack me! No thank you. If you out a poster up saying no truck or treaters they knock anyway or bang in the window and get annoyed with you and possibly scratch your car on the way out. That's not fun, is it!! Please if you are taking part, please don't be a nuisance to other people.

That's beautiful, JasperDamerel. You really would have to be a miserable killjoy to dislike the festival the way you describe it, and that's the way it should be, of course.

agree Jasper with all your posts.

I totally understand why people get peed off with it, when we first went out we too knocked on everyones door - I was with a so called seasoned Halloweener too am very at the memory now and of course only partake in areas where it is obvious people want knockers.

But where people want it - its lovely! Its a lovely night out and you bump into people from all over...the little dc running about looking cute its great and YY t community spirit.

the truth is I dont care about its origins I love it - perfectly sums up the atmosphere a this time of year. Witches, brooms, potions, spells, black cats, bats, frogs pumpkins, strange magic....LOVE IT.

I used to love trick or treating when I was little we made our own witch costume out of a black bin liner and glitter and a very primitive paper cone hat, I remember they sold spooky stuff in newsagents and small shops back in the 80's nowhere near like what you get now tho. Ads just bombard the living daylights out of events now tho and make people sick of them, even a random boring bank holiday Monday gets rammed down your neck, naturally cos you have got to eat loads and get intoxicated and spend any coinage you are lucky to have left on a load of cack, right? Like we don't already know that it's a bank hol weekend/ Halloween/ Christmas! etc. Mute button

Don't forget we have Dewali tomorrow as well.

What I can't be doing with is the new-fangled English "Bonfire Night". Everyone knows that lanterns and fireworks and outdoor food and slightly gruesome fun activities and drink and toffee apples and all that malarkey belongs to Halloween and not to some spurious alternative celebration that no-one else in the world celebrates

Don't know if this is irony or not - but the bonfire night fun activities and outdoor food and drink, apple bobbing etc is exactly what I remember from my childhood, we just didn't do Halloween. The Agatha Christie novel a pp mentioned just describes these same activities which made me think it must be a regional thing - but there was no mention here of trick or treating.

I don't decorate my house but I do have sweets in in case children call - I couldn't be so churlish as to not give them anything - but I suppose it's the trick OR treat I don't like - we want sweets or we will play a trick on you. If I had been brought up with it I might well have thought differently.

The PP who is 21 and had celebrated Halloween as long as she could remember made me smile - I remember when I thought 20 years ago was a long time ago too.

I grew up in London and Halloween was not celebrated as a really big deal as it is now. Yes there was trick or treat but not in a major way, pretty low key. Who gave af? Guy Fawkes Night was the one I don't buy that it was a celebration steeped in Brit history & consciousness, of course it wasn't

Halloween now is just another commercialised festival out there, all about business and making money, once you have something children are also attracted to then its a winner.

As a bit of silliness its fun tho, Im off to a Halloween party tonight, can't wait to get all dressed up in costume and Im going to thoroughly enjoy myself

I dont get the 'Bonfire night' is new either. Its been present in one form or another for hundreds of years in UK. It is a bit of a mix up with halloween traditions but its also a 'thing' on its own.

Its a ceremonial burning of the 'traitor' Guy Faukes bit gruesome but its also a community thing. (It was also a burning of the pope at one time!)

We always had a bonfire in all the villages round here, we collected stuff for weeks going round with a 'bogey' to get everyones spare wood, papers etc. And we stuffed a 'guy' put 'him' on a bogey and went round the village getting "a penny for the guy". All innocent fun.

Community fireworks, hot dogs round the bonfire, a great night for all the villages. Now there is only 1 or 2 big ones in the whole area due to all the health and safety rules its too expensive to hold them any more.

It was irony, kaitlin. English people do a lot of the stuff that Irish and Scottish people do on Holloween on Bonfire Night instead. Including going from door to door begging, although people don't really do that any more. The main difference is that instead of dressing themselves up, they do it with a guy and ritually burn someone to death.

I can understand English people being sad that their local traditions are dying out in favour of those from other countries or regions, but have little sympathy for anyone who expresses this in a way that excludes any areas which traditionally celebrate Halloween from the definition of Britain or the UK.

I realise that I am ignoring Wales in all of this, but I don't know what people in Wales do at this time of year.

Well, if it's about tradition I shall give out ale in return for a song from the little beggars samhain. pffft. no continous practice exsists and no records, whatever the latest snake oil/ crystal dealer told you.

Rainy. Samhain Edinburgh Celebration 2016. Lots of people celebrate it and I can assure you continuous practice does exist 😊

So you don't have a problem celebrating burning a man to death but you dislike Halloween?

Ok then...

I'd happily take the ale, but I think most parents would prefer their kids got sweeties.

Traditions change with the times, and I like celebrating lots of things. Haribo instead of soul cakes doesn't feel like a big deal.

And of course it's about tradition. That's pretty much the point of all the annual celebrations.

Clashcityrocker, with great great difficulty and skinned knuckles! I have fond memories from when I was wee of carved turnip lanterns and the smell of roasting turnip throughout the house! Of course that was when my Mum did it, thankfully pumpkins are so much easier!!

Quite ironic really that. We spend time drumming it into our children never to excepts sweets off strangers !

That should have read accept

I can only speak for my bit of Wales jasper but I remember trick or treating and Halloween parties from my childhood, and I'm the wrong side of thirty.
This year we have two parties today (a child's one and a grown up one) and then get to get all dressed up again on Monday for trick or treating

I took the reference to "new-fangled Bonfire Night" as making the point that Halloween is much older.