To think my MIL is wrong?

[Bluemonkey18]

I was talking with gf mother (61) about carving pumpkins and she said that they didn't have pumpkins back in the 60s and instead carved turnips. She said they would put a candle inside and run around, rattling bins and scaring people. And that trick or treating wasn't a thing.

Halloween was never a thing for us. I was born in 1947.

Why would you think MIL is wrong?

Aren't all MILs wrong according to MN? Quite a novelty to read so much support for a MIL! So many people think things only started when they themselves were born,

The rhyme used to start
Christmas is coming

Yeah, it's definitely Christmas. It makes no sense to have used it for Halloween. Eating goose at Christmas is a tradition hundreds of years old. The geese getting fat for Halloween is nonsense.

I am old now but I would cut my right hand off just to go back to those days for a few hours.

Same here, but as two one-handed turnip carvers we might have to combine forces. 😄

This!

I'm in my early 50s and Halloween was never a thing - we didn't do anything. The current Halloween obsession comes from the US.

In fact I was shocked at the fuss made over it when my DCs started junior school - I'm so glad they're old enough to make their own fun about it now.

The 'really?' was a turn of phrase to indicate surprise. I'm not questioning other people's memories! Just surprised that there is such a big different between what people did in the past over a very short period of time. It's quite a common turn of phrase in my neck of the woods (South Wales). It seems there's a substantial difference between when/ what traditions people took part in as children depending on where they lived - as much as when. Certainly if your childhood was in the later half of the 20th Century.

For what it's worth, my dad (born late 1940s, Midlands) remembers pole bobbing at Halloween parties as a kid - but said trick or treating wasn't done and making a guy/ penny for a guy was a bigger deal. My mum (born 1950s, South Wales) pretty much the same. She said her family (lived with her religious grandparents) didn't do dressing up for Halloween, but friends did to go to parties (usually guides/ scouts/ church hall stuff). She said trick or treating was fairly new when I was a little kid - but after ET came out more people wanted to do it.

This notalgia trip has really made me want to do apple bobbing and eat hot dogs by a big bonfire at a scout hut though!

We did swedes and blistered our palms doing it. It was hard work!!

Kids these days with their soft squishy pumpkins.... don't know they're born...

A lot of recent traditions have been imported from the states and its sad to see our own traditions pushed out.

Baby showers, never happened, it was considered unlucky to buy anything before the baby safely arrived, but to visit once it was here with a present and to cross the baby's palm with silver for luck.

End of school prom. We would have a leaving disco and everyone would sign each others shirts.

Pre-school graduations, seeing more and more Fb pics of 4-year-olds in graduation caps and robes.

Just feels like more and more 'events' to celebrate (put pressure on parents to spend money)

I'm surprised you are challenging someone's experience as being "wrong". People can have had different experiences to you, you see.

We did turnips in the 80's/90's my god they are hard to carve.

Totally agree with all the above. I hate all those things.

12 pages and nearly a day later, and op hasn't been back (although I haven't rtft, just clicked the 'see all' link.

Hopefully op realises that mil in this case is not wrong. We did neepie lanterns.

Carving turnips, that's a job and a half. Butternut squash are easy peasy compared to bullet like turnips. Actually I think the poster means swedes, in Scotland they call them turnips, which in England are small white veg.

Scotland in the 50s - turnip lanterns, with added blood from where the knife slipped carving them .....

44. North West. Turnips.

58 living in Lancashire - Halloween wasn’t a big thing but we carved lanterns from turnips or large swede
pumpkins were not on sale in any greengrocers in the 60s or 70s where I lived

Only in the south.

Here in the North we know what a turnip is and it isn't those titchy little things.

Thinking this through, I imagine turnips were easy to carve with power tools.

Last year I bought myself a knock off dremel specifically for carving turnips!

Lol we used sharp knives. I remember having to take a swede and a kitchen knife to school in year 6 to make them. It would never happen now.

Funnily enough I was just wondering if Black and Decker made an attachment.

i just remembered my mum taking me to the pictures in - hmm will have been '69 or '70. We saw Sleeping Beauty, and i remember the dragon thing really scaring me. Then on the way home we met a bunch of "witches" going to a party and i screamed the place down. That will have been Camberly/Sandhurst area. (they gave me a sweet and i was fine after that)

To those of you wondering the modern way to carve a turnip/ swede/ moot.
You need a spade bit for your electric drill.