To disagree that Halloween is "American"

[allytjd]

I'm a bit annoyed that loads of people have been moaning about Halloween, saying they don't like it because its American, even DS1's French teacher (who is french) repeated this to the whole class. The phrase "trick or treat" is american and so are pumpkins but the rest, dressing up, lanterns, children being given treats etc, are very traditional up here in Scotland and have always been a much bigger thing than bonfire night up here.
We have traditional games, and traditional foods for halloween and we have been doing them for hundreds of years - Where do you think the Americans got their traditions from?
It is a combination of anti-Americanism and ignorance about non-English traditions and it really annoys me! Its supposed to be fun!

When my father first came to visit me and saw people deliberately fire-raising and then attacking fire personnel he was more shocked than I'd seen him in a very long time.

It is a felony to commit such an offense in many states, and people who assault police, fire crews and paramedics are dealt with seriously.

I got to know quite a few americans when I was younger (due to student exchanges etc.). I remember being shocked by their tales of being sent to juvenile hall for under age drinking, and getting arrested for being out after curfew or hanging about in a crowd at night, these were all middle class kids too. It was as though they had all tried bad behaviour in a more extreme way than we had (they had also taken more varied drugs than we provincial Scots had) but it had been nipped in the bud more severely by parents and the authorities and they had grown out of it well before they went to college, it seemed different to our bunch who only had the nerve to start misbehaving after we had left home.
I wonder what would happen here if we started arresting kids for being drunk instead of at best sighing and at worst laughing? By the way I am not a Daily Mail reader.

I l-o-v-e-d guising! Scotland (central), mid seventies, hey we're all a bit old eh
Small area tho, all kids went together to child-friendly houses. Dookin, songs, dances. Didn't see any kids round here last night tho. Bit sad really,as I remember it was great fun - though I heard the city centre was crawling with grown up guisers last night!

the party thing is fun, too.

i'd love to throw a big ol' party for the girls.

with dooking and such.

i rather like the dooking for apples thing when they're really young and get to do it with forks.

we did halloween but not guy fawlkes in NI
You dressed up and sang around the doors and got 2p or apple cake and we all played games and ducked for apples etc

we would have never done anything to anyones house for fear of being murdered by the home owners/any "big" people and lastly our parents

quite often they would make you sing again or do a dance but it was a really good laugh

NOT AMERICAN

When we lived in the USA as a childless couple mid 80s, Halloween was virtually the same as the UK. We went to fancy dress parties and got tanked. Paid no attention to what little kids were doing.

I remember just adapting clothes that we already had. DH had a boiler suit, and I stuck cotton wool balls all over it so he could be a clown. I can't remember my exact costume but I remember having stripey socks that I used to wear bona fide as a student and people in American couldn't believe that anyone would own such a thing (they just came from the Sock Shop).

The one difference between the US and the UK was that in the US costumes were anything fancy dress, and in the UK, they typically were ghost/ghoulish. When we moved back to the UK, we went to a party with me dressed as a French maid and I was the only one in a non-spooky costume (I made up for it in my behaviour).

'When we moved back to the UK, we went to a party with me dressed as a French maid and I was the only one in a non-spooky costume (I made up for it in my behaviour).'

When we moved here to the West we noticed more people dressed up as things like French maid's, Batman, etc.

When I was a primary school-aged kid in Edinburgh in the 1970's Guy Fawkes was not the big thing, it was just a bonfire with guy and fireworks in the local park. It was English.
Hallowe'en was what we looked forward to. We dressed up as witches, ghosts, the devil etc and went guising round the neighbouring houses, many of them people we didn't know .

You HAD to learn a poem or a song or tell some jokes or do some magic tricks or something, you COULDN'T just stand there with your hand out when they opened the door. If they thought you were good you'd get 5 or 10p and a few sweets or a mandarin. I don't remember ever going away completely empty handed. Mind you I was usually the eldest in charge of my little brothers and sister and people were usually kind to the wee guisers.
We used to do:
"Not last night but the night before,
3 wee monkeys came to the door,
one with a fiddle and one with a drum
and one with a pancake stuck to his bum!"
We had a real fiddle and a drum and the youngest would hide behind the sofa or the door and pop out at the end with something resembling a pancake held over his bum. My goodness how they laughed!
No-one ever played a 'trick' on the person whose home they were guising at, that was American and I didn't even understand what 'trick or treating' was till I was grown up. If you didn't get as much money or as many sweets as you'd hoped for you still said 'thank you' nicely and went on your way.

We did dooking for apples and treacle scones where you had to try and eat bits out of a madly swinging treacle-covered scone or potato scone hanging from a washing line on a bit of string. Very messy...
Oh yes and the very laborious carving of turnip lanterns...the bent spoons and the blistered fingers!
My sister made a lantern out of a carrot one year with a birthday candle inside!

SGM, there is a great pride in making an impossible costume.

I remember going to a fancy dress ball (headlined by Jerry Springer, no less) where the them was animals (it was a zoo fundraiser). Someone was dressed as a lobster and it was the most amazing costume, on top of many amazing costumes. I can only think of most of them as being home crafted.

My claim to fame is making a Pikachu costume for DS. It really did use a lot of sewing skills, but all from a Simplicity pattern.

I only ever sew for costumes, mostly school plays.

i once won a prize in elementary school after my mother dressed me up as teh Chiquita banana girl.

ex-pat! - the dooking for appes with forks! I had forgotton about that. You had to stand above the basin of water and apples on the floor with a fork in your teeth and drop it into the basin with the aim of spearing an apple...it's amazing no-one ever got a fork through their foot!

Thanks SM,

Your story brings to mind, were there any Halloween songs or rhymes (other than Tam O' Shanter).

I cannot recall any songs that we would sing that were specific to Halloween.

No forks, SM. You just stuck your face in the water. Fork were for cheats!

Expat, you must have done Day of the Dead stuff - what did that entail?

we even got some anti-transpirant. you spray your carved pumpkin with it and it lasts longer.

squeaky - we used to do
"Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man's hat, if you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do, if you haven't got a ha'penny god bless you"
But it wasn't considered very good 'form' to mention christmas when it was only the end of october...

i actually found day of the dead WAY scarier than halloween.

when we lived in mexico city they did this freaky parade that scared the living hell out of me.

and all those candles.

nah, that was a bit too pagan in overtone for me.

my gran always did it like that and it was all serious and not much fun.

she told us the portal to the spirit world was open (some Catholic she was!) and that people hid their faces with masks so the spirits wouldn't recognise them and to pay hommage to the dead.

creeped us out big style.

i mean, damn, i thought it was about trick or treat and fun costumes and games.

squeaky - i think we only resorted to forks when we had half-drowned ourselves trying to grab the too-short stems, or for the little ones who couldnt get their mouths open wide enough to grab a stem-less, saliver-slick apple!

I grew up in Ireland where Halloween was always a big deal. Moved to the UK in 1976, eagerly anticipated Halloween and ... nothing. Not a sausage. It was just the 31st October, nothing special. Halloween certainly wasn't celebrated here (or at least Devon) late 70s.

I veered too much off the subject earlier didn't I? No wonder i tend to kill threads, nevermind I've been enjoying everyones replies and many thanks to shitemum for reminding me about the three wee monkeys rhyme my three wee DS's will think its hilarious!

I've lived in London all my life and last night, was the FIRST TIME EVER I got trick or treating kids come to my door. I was a bit embarassed cos I only have fruit bars and healthy shit in my house to give them.

I guess people think Halloween is American on account of Jamie Lee Curtis, which is a bit like saying Winnie the Pooh is American.

It's a ancient Celtic festival, that the Romans and the Church took over as part of establishing their power base and suppressing pagan, goddess worship.

Our local Church (of which I am an infrequent attender) successfully ruined Halloween round here this year by putting adverts about in our local papers. We had great weather but hardly any pumpkins and just a few cheery polite groups of youngsters doing their best to have fun.

Hope the Church bugger off next year.