To ask why people celebrate Halloween

[Flippetydip]

This is absolutely not a goady post but I just don't get Halloween at all. It seems like a celebration of everything that is horrible. Why do people do it?

I celebrate if because I like the macabre.
I was a teenage goth and I’ve always loved the supernatural.
Also the kids love the chance to dress up.

Well no one celebrates it here really. Small village, nothing happens, no one knocks, not bothered as Halloween wasn't celebrated much when I was child either. I've always lived in small villages and the same story in each, wondering if Halloween is a town thing?

No its a cultural thing. All the villages and towns round my way celebrate it.
You have just lived in areas it isnt celebrated..come on, move to Scotland its good up here😉

Willow, I'm in the South, they obviously lack enthusiasm here!

I hate Halloween (especially now that American traditions have been bolted on to British traditions) and, as a lapsed Catholic, I really hate Bonfire Night. I don't find either of them uplifting at all. To be fair, I can never be arsed with fancy dress so Halloween was never going to appeal to me.

I like Halloween, especially more now that “American traditions have been bolted on to British traditions” 🙄. I always used to feel jealous of how much fun it seemed in American films.

Halloween when I was a child consisted of a witches hat from the corner shop and a bin liner, covered in tin foil stars (fashioned by my ever-so-creative mother) for a cape. If we were feeling fancy it was a black outfit to be a black cat, complete with a tights leg filled with socks, pinned to your arse for a tail!

I would have loved the outfits that they have today!

Why the rollyeyed smiley Busy? We all have different likes and dislikes, it’s not compulsory to enjoy Halloween. Enjoy the sugar and dressing up!

i like halloween, because i like to get creative with making costumes for the kids and we love to carve pumpkins. I love scary movies and jump scares and I'm a pagan so also love the samhain aspect of it.
Everyone has different taste in what the think is horrible, personally i hate the commercialisation and overpriced greed of christmas and think thats much more horrible.

It's part of my cultural heritage - it's derived from Samhain and has been celebrated / marked for hundreds of years where I come from. I'm not keen on the 'Americanisation' of it (my kids don't trick or treat - they go guising) but otherwise it is a fun, creative day to help break up the long cold dark winter!

I like carving pumpkins and putting them outside...I'm quite happy to hand out sweets to trick or treaters. I'm not so keen on the gory zombie fake blood side of it, so we don't do that. I also try to avoid plastic crap.

It's a fun thing to do in the autumn...as are Christmas and Easter, even if you're not Christian. I also celebrate the longest day, even though I'm not pagan.

I'm the same as fantastic, it's Samhain we celebrate. The turning of the wheel etc. Every religion is different, it's not all about trick or treating.

DontMentionTheWar, it’s like MN bingo. Everyone blames America for everything in the UK that they dislike.

Halloween - “bloody Americans”
The way kids today speak “them bloody Americans”.

It comes up every year! The fact that people celebrate Halloween over here has nothing to do with America.

I don’t like Halloween either and we don’t celebrate it. Everyone is free to do as they please of course but it does annoy me that the gory decorations and costumes etc are just everywhere and not possible to evade.
I will purposely be avoiding any shops with DC tomorrow. Not yet decided on what to do if anyone turns up on our door.

But in essence Is this just making evil “fun”?
I don’t agree with it at all

Can some of the Scottish posters or others who mentioned guising give an idea of the type of thing children in those communities do for their treat? I’m going to singlehandedly try to make that happen in SE because the children here do get grabbier as the years go by.

Samhain or Halloween is a chance to reconnect with our dead ancestors and to celebrate when the veil between the worlds becomes thinest.
it's not about gore but about magic really...rather beautiful.

I think the origins are to help us confron death like the Mexican day of the dead...
Death isnt evil...it's natural

My DD’s are only nearly 4 and just 2 but they’ve loved it. We don’t go trick or treating (not my thing) so had a chocolate hunt in the garden. We carved pumpkins, they dressed up for a Halloween party on Saturday and they’re having a special Halloween themed dinner tomorrow (wiggly worms (spaghetti) and green jelly). I have drawn pumpkin faces on their satsumas for breakfast tomorrow. All harmless fun that has made them smile.

I don't celebrate Halloween as such and I hate all the tat but I do have fun doing other stuff as it's my birthday

I don’t find witches and vampires very fun either. A pumpkin carving to keep the ghouls at bay here and that’s our limit. The eldest is wearing a lucky charm to school tomorrow though as the girl who sites next to him has said she’s a vampire!

How absurd Busy. As you can see in my post, I hated Halloween before Trick or Treating was grafted onto it. I just hate it more now as it’s mainly about knocking on doors and begging for sweets.

In scotland the guisers have to do a turn. Just corny jokes or a song or a dance. Simple things to earn their sweets. They always make me laugh at thier enthusiasm.
Even an American family we know say "trick or treat" and tell us jokes too😀

Its not begging for sweets if people have bought them specifically to hand out and have shown they are participating in Halloween.

I grew up in Ulster and we did Halloween Rhyming (which sounds exactly like guising). We carved turnips (swedes) instead of pumpkins and dressed up as pretty unscary witches / ghosts / vampires, (not serial killers or blood soaked zombies or whatever). We did a chant; "Halloween is coming and the goose is getting fat, will you please put a penny in the old man's hat?, if you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do, if you haven't got a ha'penny God Bless You". I've heard of it with Christmas instead of Halloween- maybe we got it wrong where we lived!

People put change or monkey nuts in the hat. I remember getting sweets instead once and thought it was really odd!

Halloween is derived from Samhain, the ancient feast of the dead when the veil between the worlds is thin and the ancestors are welcomed and celebrated. The modern name comes from Christianity - All Hallows Eve, the eve of All Saints Day on 1 November and the unsainted dead are celebrated on All Souls Day on 2 November, the same day as the Mexican Day of the Dead when families visit their dead and party with them in the cemeteries with altars to them at home. It is a festival of lights against the darkness in both Christianity and Paganism. Also a time of death and feasting as the livestock who would not be able to be fed through the winter would be killed and stored (salting etc) or eaten in a feast. The Celts counted days from sunset, hence the traditional celebration of the night before.

I remember guising as a child and the terrible smell of the tumshie lanterns! 🎃 Pumpkins are so much easier.

I shall be organising flowers for my parents' grave and remembering my Beloved Dead. Not a time for horror but a time for remembering and facing the fear of death and the dark.

Oh, and some witches do have both broomsticks and black cats... And nearly every one I know has a pointy hat bought in the shops at Halloween 🦇 for the pure hell of it 😂

There's such a lot of snobbery about Halloween. It has a long history in some parts of the UK, so enough of the "it's American" bollocks. The same people who turn their noses up are often happy to stand around a bonfire a few days later, and celebrate the gruesome torture and death of a man who died 400 years ago