To find Halloween utterly tedious?

[TheGigglingGazelle]

Just that, really. I get why it's fun for kids, but grown adults getting excited about it, and the way everything that happens any time around Hallowe'en has to have a 'spooky' theme? casts a sidelong glance at Strictly while typing Each to their own, but... I just don't get it.

Is it just me?

God we have some po faced on here. Heaven forbid an adult having a little fun.

People who don't want to understand what Halloween is don't give a fuck about folklore and the culture of this country.

I live in a very tiny cul-de-sac . Two houses and eight bungalows, all of which are inhabited by very elderly people, some of whom have daily help.
I used to be a first port of call to two lovely ladies and I would visit a third. Every Halloween I’d be asked to try to stop ‘trick or treaters’ from visiting them. As soon as they’d call on us I would suggest that they didn’t call on the bungalows. They never listened. Some even had their parents with them , but clearly they thought I was bats. It really frightened my lovely elderly friends. I’ve even run over to stop ‘ trick or treaters.’
My anger over this issue is having 15/16 year olds pitching up. I always offer sweets to them yet they still spray silly string and foam. It’s as if they feel it’s carte blanche to commit mayhem.
Im also miffed at the sheer number of pumpkins that are destroyed at this time of year. I wish I could post a link but I can’t , for whatever reason, regarding food waste. It was The Guardian, maybe, that suggested that enough pumpkins were sold for Halloween to make a pumpkin pie for each man, woman and child in the UK . Given that we barely eat it then pumpkins go to waste... tons of the stuff.
I’m sorry but Halloween can go and f**k itself.

Even daft phone apps are infected! I quite like five minutes downtime on games like candy crush or hay day, but pretty much the whole of October they have a “seasonal” update with cows in witches hats and the like. (I know it sounds silly but it is a bit of a peeve of mine..)

When I think of all the fun people aren't having on MN. All these competitive "grown ups". So boring. I'm actually dying (slowly, but surely) and rn have no hair at all, feel shit so buying a bunch of sweets and putting on a silly costume and having a fun night with my kids seems like a better bet than sitting home with the lights off congratulating myself for not participating in an age old tradition.
You don't have to buy plastic things. We have some card decorations and made a lot of pom pom spiders from old wool that we are currently using. Old clothes make great costumes. Pumpkins are biodegradable and delicious.
Some of you need to open your eyes to the possibilities of life enhancing silliness.

Tedious - exactly!

But it really isn’t a thing! It’s not something to celebrate or something to be festive about. It’s commercialised bollocks. “Happy Halloween” doesn’t even mean anything.

Personally I think it’s to be embraced, it’s just another part of our culture.

With the children we’ve so far done the pumpkin festival (kids do Halloween activities and pick and carve their own pumpkin) 2 x Halloween parties, 1 x laser quest zombie night, football zombie night and scary movie nights and making candy and chocolate apples...

For us adults, we’ve had beamish Halloween night, fright night and mortal to mortem night... we have another fright night and on

Halloween night itself we’ve got Halloween game night in a old barn (kids and adults playing old fashioned games (twister, musical chairs, bulldog, tin can, human hungry hippos etc... all with a twist...

You make of it as you want, same with every other holiday celebration.

Oh bore off.

Still better than what we had where I grew up. We didn't have Halloween but did All Saint's day. Which meant that we drove hours to cemeteries where our apparently relatives were buried, cleaned the graves, lit a candle and then visited living apparently relatives living nearby.
Came home shattered in the evening. It's been decades and I still don't know who that people actually were, everyone is bit wobbly on how they are actually related to us, and why the hell couldn't they take care of the grave instead of us driving for 2 hours each way🤷
I envy your Halloween 😁

emperor

🎃

Tedious? The biggest traditional festival of all, together with Beltaine.

It marks the beginning of shorter days, souls passing over to the Other World, honours harvest and life as well as honouring the dead.

It's New Year to all those following one of the Old Faiths. Pumpkins may be fairly new, but look up turnip carving. Have a look at the origins of this festival. Celebrate. Goodness knows, we could do with a little reflection and celebration.

Back at cha @rufusthebewilderedreindeer

But it really isn’t a thing! It’s not something to celebrate or something to be festive about.

WTAF!!!!!! You know it’s an ancient festival that originated in this part of the world and had always been celebrated in the UK and Ireland? Are you actually ignorant of the history of the islands you live on or just racist towards those cultures, Irish and Scots, which have held on better to our heritage?

YANBU

I'm not a fan and have got away without celebrating it for 30 years and rarely get trick or treaters. If we did we didn't used to answer the door to them. Now a few local parents know we have a baby DD so will probably be stopping at ours while trick or treating. We have sweats ready this year and will probably start making an effort for DD's sake in upcoming years but I wish I didn't have to.

I hate it.

It wasnt really a big thing when i was a kid (1990s). My dd loves it so she goes to my sisters house every halloween and opens her door to about 50 kids and hands them sweets.

I close all shutters and the house looks in darkness but we still get pestered like mad and its awful.

It has got ridiculously over the top I need the last few years. I don't think I know any adult in real life who actually sports "Halloween make-up", for example, yet it's absolutely everywhere on social media.

*in, not "I need", sorry.

Why would you send your kinds to strangers’ homes to beg for sweets? That’s not how it’s done here. They go to homes of people they know to show them their costumes and in return they are given some sweets.

In our village we do “trunk or treat” instead. A lot of places here are doing that these days. It’s a lot safer that way as we have no pavements or street lights and bears roaming around - not safe for small children to be wandering around in.

I think it's shit. I hate it. I hate all the stuff in the shops, the door to door begging and general waste of it all. I also hate the way I'm told I'm miserable if I admit I hate it.

For years I didn’t get it. I hated the plastic tat, the trick or treating, the cheap supermarket costumes. It seemed pointless.
But the older I get, the more I understand how to make it what I want it to be.
We do pumpkins but no plastic decorations. We recycle/reuse costumes for the kids and the trick or treating is limited to a few houses nearby.
I try and focus on the origins of it, of All Hallows and All Souls and Samhain. I try to see it as a welcome to the dark months ahead, to embracing the changing seasons and the natural rhythm of the earth.
It can be whatever you want it to be. It need not be a consumerist, plastic and sweet filled tat festival if you don’t wish it to be.

@ANiceLuxury it absolutely WAS a big thing in the 90's. As it was in the 70's & 80's. Just because your parents likely didn't do anything for it doesn't mean thousands of others didn't. I was out trick or treating in '90 at age 5 and have been doing duck apple for decades.

I don't mind Halloween, but Strictly is the most dull, overrated twattery on TV. What do people see in it? It's so fucking tedious. Surely it will die soon?

I'm just hopeful we don't import it from the UK to the US.

Quite Identify, it's a time when we welcome the dark.

Do people not remember being children and the absolute thrill of the turn of the year?

Loved it as a child. Not my thing as an adult. I'm sure I will enjoy it when DD is bigger (only one now).