Halloween Judgement- keep your views to yourself

[HappyHalloweenWeenies]

I'm not religious and love Halloween. I have always celebrated it and my dp celebrates with me. Nothing too scary or out there because our kids are young. No chainsaw Massacre figures in garden or dripping blood, just the usual pumpkins, ghosts and witches, food and pre agreed trick or treating with neighbours. Our kids love it too for dressing up and have been taught in a fun way and not a 'celebrating evil' way.

Anyway, sil and mil invited themselves down this week. I didn't invite them and made it very clear to dp that as it was half term I would be doing the usual Halloween stuff so kids don't miss out. Dp fine with this and we arranged a few activities like pumpkin picking, carving etc. Sil and mil here the whole week. Both kids going to the village party but no expectation for either mil or sil and kids to attend, just one evening.

Anyway, sil been fine. A few questions about it, nothing phased rudely. Politely declined Halloween party, which we offered with the caveat if it's not her thing that is fine no judgement. Sil is a fairweather Christian, eg church for marriage and getting into schools so we weren't sure if we should ask or not but thought it would be rude not to.

Mil has been making a few snide comments. Kids watching ridiculously sanitised Halloween songs on TV (think cocomelon) and scoffs things like 'how can they have a 'happy halloween' with all those ghoulish characters? Trying to dissuade kids from their own pumpkin designs and do ones she approves of etc. It's all been very low key so I haven't mentioned it to dp but aibu to think that as she knows we have conflicting views and she invited herself down knowing full well we celebrate it she needs to keep her views to herself? It's starting to grate on me as I don't want my kids to start seeing evil in perfectly innocent dressing up etc.

I feel it's a bit like if we invited ourselves down at Christmas and then made snide comments about going to church.

Aibu or is sil approach better and mil is engaging in weird power games?

If you enjoy Halloween, that's all that matters. Stuff everybody else.

In fact, OP, you've just reminded me to put out my Halloween 'wreath', 🤗from last year x

But the current month long tat guests bear no relation to traditional "guising" and the way it used to be celebrated

as the saying goes “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”.

the modern celebrations of Easter and Christmas bear no resemblance to the traditional ways of celebrating these religious feast days either.

and Christmas “tat” is much more in evidence.

I'd say the same about Christmas tat and Christmas decorations appearing months before Christmas.

Christmas wasn’t even a public holiday in Scotland until 1958.
that really shows how much things have changed in a relatively short time.

Imo you need to wear a Halloween outfit the entire duration of their visit.

@HappyHalloweenWeenies We eat out Pumpkins. Pumpkin soup, curry pie, seeds. It's a really versatile vegetable.

Well good for you if you can do anything with a pumpkin 🙄

IMO they are the most boring, tasteless, watery vegetable on God's green earth, (rivalled only by melons and marrows)

They aren't VFM as they may be stonking great things but have an empty "middle" full of seeds that you have to scoop out and struggling to peel them is a nightmare.

And please don't send me recipes I've seen them all.🙁

I'd be very irritated with you MIL and be ramping things up considerably as a consequence.

Samhain is a big thing in our house. We'll be carving swedes later this week and preparing for the festival. No plastic though nor overpriced sweets. We never get trick or treaters calling and my DC are adults now. Plenty of home made Soul Cakes and my home brewed mead.

As for the pumpkin haters - pumpkins are now grown as a seasonal crop for Halloween. Just like Christmas trees are for Christmas. It's a bonus that pumpkins are edible and they don't take years to achieve commercial size either. They're annuals and grow in a season.

As they are grown for carving the flavour isn't good - a proper "real" pumpkin grown for flavour is a very different thing.

IMO they are the most boring, tasteless, watery vegetable on God's green earth, (rivalled only by melons and marrows)

Yup. The large supermarket variety, sold primarily for Halloween, are particularly bland and tasteless. Probably best used in a soup. For pumpkin pie I definitely would not use, the smaller variety or a squash works better.

Doesn't surprise me because we do t have extra cops to pull out the box and can you just imagine how many calls we get just for this exact thing ? I think that's why I hate it !!! Extended shifts , enforced overtime, not a chance of getting leave .

pretty poop all round.

Not all Halloween decorations are throwaway tat.
i knitted this wee fox cub and his pumpkins from oddments of wool.

That's beautiful x

@jumbliesj
A sweet potato pie uses pretty much the same ingredients incl spices, and is lovely.

I used canned pumpkin (in US) and it always turns out nicely.

Do christians not celebrate halloween then? I grew up going to church and we always had halloween parties, my DH

*poated to soon. My dH is catholic and celebrates and my DC go to Catholic school and they do loads of halloween stuff?

Sorry if I am missing the point of the thread.

@Benjispruce4
Au contraire, the wearing of costumes / guising has always been a part of Hallowe'en. As times have changed, so have the costumes. We can now afford Disney and Star Wars stuff, etc. People of yore made do with boys dressing in girls' clothing or costumes and head coverings/ masks made of straw. This is all well documented.

It hasn't always been a 'spooky' holiday either, but was considered a liminal time when it was believed the spirits of the dead wandered the countryside, not to terrorise but to stay connected with loved ones. People in Ireland used to leave out food for deceased ancestors and other spirits. There are some culinary traditions associated with Hallowe'en thst are still followed - colcannon is a Hallowe'en dish, and barm brack (a light fruit cake) containing little symbols of future marriage or wealth or health is still baked. Games involving divination were played.

The old feast of Samhain was the end of the agricultural year and the start of winter. It was traditionally a holiday involving mischief making. In the US this element has been successfully stamped out, not just by policing but by the swamping of streets with legions of children and parents. Sometimes you fight fire with water.

I recall Hallowe'en mask-making in art class in my convent primary school in Dublin in the 1970s, and going house to house in the evening collecting apples and nuts and small change. The local lads scoured the neighbourhood for scrap wood during the weeks beforehand, and the evening was capped off with a bonfire in the local park. There was always a huge bonfire lit on a nearby headland by the coast. We could see it from several miles off.

Back then, we kids used to opt for witch masks and home made costumes to go with them, the Germanic Grimm's fairy tales overlaying the old Celtic feast. We were all trying to be cool and tough. These days kids don't mind being associated with soppy, goody-good Disney characters.

it depends on the church/type of church. Some churches preach against it and run alternative 'light' parties instead.

@ScarlettOHaraHamiltonKennedyButler

You haven't missed the point at all.

It's really only those strands of protestantism which are derived from Puritan and other fundamentalist expressions of Christianity which tend to be opposed to Hallowe'en.

I find threads in Hallowe'en here really interesting as you can see the historical strands of protestant culture still going strong even in a very secular and churchless society.

Exactly @mathanxiety I'm Irish so Halloween was always a traditional event for us. In the impoverished 80s you got a bin bag and a witches hat. And DPs were devout Catholics but it was never closely associated with anything evil in that regard. (We are bouncy-castle Catholics now)
So it's our culture, innit

And apart from a few pumpkins (supporting local farmers!) and a costume every year for DS (old one gets donated and so far I've been able to give them direct to a little boy in direct provision) Everything I put out can get packed away for next year.

@CulturePigeon

Witches and witch hunting in the American Colonies was not associated with Hallowe'en. The link in this instance was to fundamentalist protestant thought.

Hallowe'en as it is known in the US really arrived in the US with the huge influx of Irish Catholic immigrants in the mid 1800s. It is celebrated everywhere in the US with great gusto, apart from strongholds of Baptist churches and Christian fundamentalist religiosity. In many cities it has merged with the Hispanic Dia de los Muertos celebration (a very similar holiday to Hallowe'en in terms of themes, liminal time, etc). And maybe in New Orleans an element of old voodoo traditions is also present.

New England comes alive in autumn, with beautiful foliage displays. The fact that it's home to Olde Worlde-looking towns and has a history of persecution of 'witches' combined with the natural seasonal attractions gives it tourist appeal, a frisson of spookiness. But it's not the epicenter of the Hallowe'en tradition in the US. This honor goes to the cities where the Irish settled - New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, andnit spread from the cities into suburbs and into popular culture.

YYY to the Walpurgis night tradition of the German immigrants finding its way into the old Irish Hallowe'en celebrations in the US. German immigration to the US coincided with the waves of Irish immigration, setting the stage for the Hallowe'en takeover of America.

There’s a chapter in one of the early Chalet School books devoted to Halloween celebrations. Maybe The Chalet School and the Lintons. this was written in the late 1929s/early 1930s by an English author, demonstrating that she knew all about Halloween celebrations.

Several of the games played are also found in the Burns poem Halloween, written in 1785. That’s another testament to the fact that Halloween has been celebrated here for centuries.

We're Christian and do some low-key stuff for Halloween 🎃 so that it's not a forbidden fruit. We've always given the dc some sweets on Halloween and while I wouldn't take them to do trick or treat, they have done it with friends a couple of times. We carve a pumpkin if the dc want to, but it's not a big deal in our house.

So YANBU for celebrating if it's your thing, and your Mil and Sil are not BU either.

There are a lot of practicing Christians who don't have any problem with kids enjoying Hallowe'en activities. It's just fun for them.
Does your MIL have a genuine issue with Hallowe'en celebrations (in which case it would have been better if she hadn't visited this week) or is she just being the fun police?
If she actually comes out and says she doesn't approve of your kids celebrating just tell her you disagree and they're having fun.
It's difficult to make a comparison with Christmas as, although you don't celebrate the religious aspect you all want to join in the festivities.