To think Halloween is just another massive marketing ploy we've all fallen for.

[Blwean]

Reading this article today https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/30/halloween-boo-basket-useless-clutter?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1HhG1J-mqf1zU7ss8lxMCkNwsMJVTKudjgEt4auGVFrS8qwKuIUUUBmQc#Echobox=1698686636

Apparently Halloween spending is set to surpass £1bn in the UK this year for the first time and shops have been making a concerted effort since 00s to introduce more products and use social media influencers to push them.

Then there's pumpkin patches. Basically fields where people place pumpkins as there's none actually growing there and people pay silly prices to go and take pictures for Instagram. A friend of mine paid £50 to take her and DCs to one of these places then she's shelled out £20 on each of them for costumes and over £30 on decorations. It's her business what she spends on but just last month she was complaining about cost of living.

I'm all for celebrating Halloween but it's just about spending more and more money each year. The Instagramisation of it has ruined it and everyone just blindly spends loads on costumes they'll use once and other meaningless tat. Its the shops cashing in and we're all just like sheep who follow the marketing and influencers so we spend more

How about YOU do better and stop making ludicrous, hyperbolic statements like this?

Taste has frig all to do with "character".

Well I was doing it 38 years ago. As we're all the kids in my street. Perhaps earlier, but that is the first year I can remember trick or treating.

Don't like it? Don't participate.

The nights only ‘suddenly darken’ because of the hour change. Otherwise they’d just keep doing it gradually until mid December. Halloween is, of course, a Christian celebration knocked from a pagan one and going back centuries. The way it’s celebrated recently though - that’s based on the US version. It’s utterly divorced from both the pagan and Christian origins.

I am the Grinch of Halloween- a load of Americanised , plastic shite. Hate it. Kids too old now thank god.

Yes, we know. Originated in Scotland and Ireland. Did it involve pumpkins and murderer costumes then, or has that come in from somewhere else, say…the US?

For all the " you do you" and professed hatred of judgement around here, people really can't stand those who won't follow the crowd...

I’m another one who went trick or treating as a child and I don’t know anyone who spends loads on Halloween, just sweets and a pumpkin. And the only people I know who go picking pumpkins are picking them from their allotments! (Pumpkins are really easy to grow but take a lot of space)

I'm 44, I was Halloweening then, complete with a bin bag witches dress and a carved turnip hanging on a string complete with an actual tea light. And if you think it's ill advised to cover you kid in a flammable outfit and then arm them with fire on an inevitably windy night, I'd agree. Glow stick are infinitely better, so I'm here for the glow sticks and the pumpkins.

@cardibach

You obviously didn't read the link because it's all explained in there to you.

But yes it did involve scary costumes but not pumpkins - turnips.

Back in 70s and 80s it definitely was a thing in SE London where I was brought up. Most streets did it but you didn’t have to have a decorated house or pumpkin outside. It was more about the trick or treat aspect and you could buy or make costumes. The range of costumes available wasn’t as wide and there was egging of houses.

I think DM took us first but later it was just us kids and probably a group of us. We had toffee apples.

The supermarkets sold sweets in packs to dole out. Or you got the fun packs of chocolate bars. DM and us kids would sometimes make and decorate gingerbread men as skeletons with white icing.

You could decorate the house (rare) and you could leave a pumpkin in a window or outside. But there wasn’t the OTT (it does look impressive some of it) decorating of houses. No bunting.

I think it’s pretty harmless the commercialising of it. Not keen on some of the tackier costumes.

Well that’s my point, isn’t it?
Pumpkins aren’t Scottish. Neither are many if the costumes used now anything you would have seen in a traditional Scottish Halloween. It’s borrowed heavily from America. You know it has.

Well, we haven't 'all fallen for it' - I don't think I've spent a penny on Hallowe'en in my life!

I find it very odd that for 364/5 days a year parents tell their DC's not to accept sweets from strangers, but on 1 day each year they are given buckets and are positively encouraged to get as many sweets as possible from, well, strangers.

@cardibach

If you can't be arsed to read it so be it.

It's the same tone deaf shite on here every bloody year.

Why? They're with their parents so that's a safe situation.

Ah yes I forgot. We did Apple ducking too.

For us as it’s 5 days before Guy Fawkes Night some of the traditions sometimes merged into one. Americans don’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Night so maybe that’s why they go all out and make Halloween so big?

😂

I don’t need to as I’ve read many things like it. Why assume everyone but you is ignorant?
again, in very simple language since you either didn’t, or couldn’t, read my first post.
Halloween originated in Scotland with guising.
There were traditional costumes relating to ‘the other world’.
The festival became big in America and we’ve imported a lot of it, including the whole thing into areas that never did guising.
These things include pumpkins and costumes related to horror films.

We were allowed to accept sweets from strangers unaccompanied as children. Obviously if you saw a big cauldron and children’s bones through the hall you were less likely to accept sweets!

I agree there’s a lot of plastic tat… but my plastic tat has been decorating my porch for about 15 years… I just add to it like my Christmas decorations.

It creates mountains of pointless tat.

As does Christmas.

Terrible for the environment. I've not fallen for it, I never spend any money on Halloween tat.

Have the posters who begrudge the American pumpkin import ever attempted to carve a face into a turnip?

Just another commercial con.

I agree, we went to one on Sat it was £3.50 per person and you didn’t have to buy a pumpkin, it was a nice afternoon out - maize maze, pumpkins, got a nice coffee :)