Is it ET's fault?

[Slugfest]

Bear with me, not everyone will be old enough for this one. Prior to ET being released in the 80's, Halloween wasn't such a big thing in the UK. ET showed how it is celebrated in the US and it seems to have exploded from there on.
So is ET responsible for Halloween as we know it today?

I haven't seen ET so can't comment on that but I'd be surprised if one film somehow lead everyone to decide to celebrate Halloween

Id say it's like anything, it grew over time due to lots of different factors like a lot of things that are ubiquitous now but were hardly heard of 50 years ago

I think it is as much Buffy/ Sabrina the Teenage Witch/ Gilmore Girls/ all Disney Channel/ all Nickelodeon content that has brought American-style Halloween as it is E.T.

But the real criminals are the shops that overproduce the tat each year for it.

Where are you getting your info from on UK popularity? What you've seen around your neighbourhood before and after 1982?

Guising has always been a thing in the UK (and Ireland).

I definitely hadn't realised Halloween was a really big thing until I saw ET when it came out (I was age 9). Was amazed at everyone dressed up and going out trick or treating. We had bonfire parties and did apple bobbing.

(By the way ET is a perfect film!)

@CleverlyBeery

I'm not saying Halloween wasn't celebrated,I know there are regional variations as well. Round my way if you were lucky enough to be unscathed after trying to carveout a turnip a candle was put in it and we used to wander round the streets with that. There was no trick or treating, dressing up or decorating houses. After ET was released Halloween just sort of exploded. I'm not complaining, it's just an observation. I'm still blaming ET 😁

No, it still wasn't a big thing in the early 90s in the UK, but what did grow in that decade was the Internet.

In the 80s in my area (north Essex) we would get big speeches in assembly every year about how we shouldn't go trick or treating, how dangerous it was to be knocking on people's houses etc. No one ever knocked on our door in the 80s

Meet Me in St Louis had a brilliant Halloween section, still makes me larf. Didn’t make me go trick or treating though

I find it incredibly odd how convinced British people are that trick or treating is an American thing when the country right next door - Ireland - a country that Britain invaded, no less - has celebrated Halloween for centuries and, in fact, Irish people were instrumental in introducing Halloween to the US. The US didn't just come up with it out of thin air, any more than they invented the dias de los muertos.

In Scotland in the early 80's we always dressed up and went guising.

I remember taking my recorder with me. We were expected to do a turn for treats, even if it was retelling a joke or a silly rhyme.

I would have given you extra treats to not play the recorder 😂

I blame Steve and Maggie

Plus the downplaying of Bonfire night because of the risk of injury

Fireworks became naff and expensive during the 90s and the americification of TV and film with videos, cable and then satellite

Very fair, I was not good, the only thing I could play badly was twinkle twinkle little star!

England, you mean England not the UK. I spend the early 90s trick or treating (guising) and dooking for apples at Brownies and whatever. It very much was celebrated in Scotland and I'm sure other parts of the UK as well.

I seriously doubt it.
Halloween has been a thing in Scotland and Ireland for decades.
ET was released in 1982. Unless you saw it at the cinema you didn't see it.
I seem to remember it wasn't released on video or shown on TV for years.
I missed it in 1982 but saw it as a special re-release showing in the cinema around 1988.
I really don't think ET had any influence on trick or treating the slightest.

Not for us up north. We fortunately were spared the carved turnip fun but only had a handful of the youngest Street kids round trick or treating. It seems to have been late 90s/early 00s that bigger groups in fancy dress started menacing neighbours.

I remember trick or treating in the late 70s and early 80s - just around our road and mostly with neighbours we knew. We got dressed up in home made costumes and carved a (bloody difficult) swede from the farm up the road. It would have been before ET. Yorkshire.

We were going door to door saying 'help the halloween party' years before ET came out and sadly since then now it is also known here as trick or treating instead but no this is not an american conceptualisation it is an Irish one and we used turnips instead of pumpkins years ago too.

Poor e t just wanted to get home.....

Yeah we trick or treated before ET came along

I guess tv and films popularised it in England, but as others have said, we've been guising in Scotland forever and in my childhood (around ET times) we were dressing up and going out guising in the neighbourhood with turnip lanterns. (Nobody decorated their homes though). At Halloween parties it was all about dooking for apples and eating sticky things or sugary donuts tied to string with your hands behind your back.
On the other hand, in my part of Scotland, we didn't do 'guys' on bonfires on bonfire night or 'penny for the guy' stuff. it was just a fire and fireworks.

@CleverlyBeery "Where are you getting your info from on UK popularity? What you've seen around your neighbourhood before and after 1982?
Guising has always been a thing in the UK (and Ireland)."

I know Halloween in some form or other has always been celebrated in Scotland and Ireland and I believe in certain parts of Northern England. But for much of England (and certainly in the South West where I live) it was only known through American TV shows. It was just something that Americans did. All our efforts at this time of year were spent on Bonfire Night. My first experience of Halloween came in the early 80s when my son was a child. A group of his friends had all decided to go trick or treating. I and the other mothers didn't know quite what to make of it because it was a bit of a mystery to us.

In 1970s Yorkshire, children would make witches hats from black paper, carve turnips, light candles, do apple bobbing, and sometimes go to neighbours’ houses asking for money.