I hate halloween!! Discuss.....

[MooMooFarm]

Am I the only miserable killjoy out there? I went into Asda this morning and they have a whole isle of decorations, 'fun' props (like a gravestone saying 'you'll be next' WTF???) and 'party food for the big day'???

Where the feck has all this come from? When I was a kid there was no halloween, just a lovely big guy fawkes do with making the guy weeks before and having a big party on the night in the back garden and a bonfire & sqitty little fireworks and all our neighbours doing the same thing (ok I'm getting carried away with nostalgia here!!).

I literally dread this time of year now. I hate the whole concept of halloween and trick or treating. My children really resent that I won't let them do it when alot of their friends do. I totally disagree in principle with letting children knock on strangers doors to 'beg' for sweets with the threat of a 'trick' if you don't cough up. I suppose its ok when its cute little kids with their parents, but half the time its ominous-looking teenagers in Scream costumes wanting money, which is just wrong in my book and if it freaks me out, how is it going to make a 90 year old living on her own feel?

Come halloween this year, my children won't be speaking to me, and I will have the front lights off and the doorbell batteries out so I can ignore everyone. I cant be the only one can I???

We will be decorating the dining room walls with bin bags and plastic skeletons and dd1 will invite a group of her friends where we will play apple dunking and wrap the mummy. There will be green cakes and meringue bones. And later there will be fireworks.

YABU, imo. You don't have to go trick or treating to enjoy Halloween. Children love dressing up.

wheres it come from??? America!!

at least the hype has,anyway!

YADNBU We do not live somewhere where trick or treating is particularly appropriate and DD has no friends locally. We ger skanky kids in a ripped bin liner at the door. When smaller my DD was terrified of them.

I loved Bonfire Night as a child and wish we could concentrate on that.

Gosh, you know, I agree. I was just thinking I like it, but only the kind of festive aspect.

I like pumpkin-shaped things, and bats, and spiders, but I hate all the horror stuff. I was in town on Sat and there was a little lad of about 3 running amok with a devil fork! Clintons have got these disgusting fake rats, although I prefer wildlife type stuff to the horror film stuff, severed fingers, eyeballs etc.

DD always wants to "trick or treat" and I refuse, unless I've primed people in advance and offered to supply the sweets myself.

We are planning to do a little party, just a few of DD's friends and the parents can stay, but I'm having to dissuade people from lending us "horror film tapes", eyeball fairy lights, etc. They have all these ideas for really really scary stuff - the kids are 5 FFS! DD is quite sensitive, I don't want to have to parry questions like "Why do everyone's eyeballs come out on Halloween mummy?"

Well I don't answer the door anymore - to be honest when I did used to,I would usually give them 10p and hope they'd p off rather than egging my house if I said no!

I wish I was braver tho....

yay! the first mn halloween moaning thread.

i love halloween - signals start of winter and i love all the spookiness

i love the 'it was never hyped years ago' argument cause it bloody well was!

I distinctly remember Halloween being huge when I was young. We used to go to my nana's house for a party and then my Aunt would take us trick or treating around the local neighbourhood. People went to loads of effort, particularly older folk, whose children had grown up.

They had apple bobbing in their gardens, giant bowls of slime (green custard) with sweets hidden in and the outside of their house decorated.

They don't do that anymore

Hate it, hate it, hate it. Although I'm not sure it's all that recent a phenomenon. My granny had her bins strewn all over her lawn about 20 years ago by 'kids having fun' when she wouldn't open the door - being a widow, on her own, after dark and all.

We make it look like we're out although tbh our location means we don't really get people knocking. And either have a nice night in together or invite a couple of friends over for dinner. I try as much as possible just to ignore all the hype in the shops and so far haven't had qus from DD but it's early days yet for her. I still can't fathom why it's 'fun' for a nursery to have a skeleton and leering devils faces decorating the front door to greet all the 0-4 year olds though

I love it

we don't buy all the plastic tat, but do carve pumpkins and light the house with candles.

we are are lucky though - thus far all our trick or treaters have been of appropriate ages, in costume, and happy with a box of Sunmaid raisins.

and it's a great excuse to watch Sleepy Hollow and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

i sometimes wonder if all the teenagers obsessed with twilight and the like are halloween deprived as kids

oh good Lord, not this again. It's been done already. every blinkin' year. involves a large dose of anti-American sentiment.

We have this thread every year!

x-post BurningBunting!

Some of us weren't on here last year.

If you are so bored of Halloween threads, why click on one and comment?! The clue was in the title.....

i think it's an interestng topic though as the objections grow each year, which is interesting

Ok well I didn't know that, being new to mumsnet - so-reeeeeeee!

and PS - there definitely wasn't all this halloween hype when I was a kid - maybe I'm just older than all of you

We celebrated Halowe'en as a child and I loved it. Trick or treating is a separate thing and that I don't liek - we don't let the dc do it.

Some years we've had a party with decorations etc, but last year we went on a spooky ride through woods on a miniature train. It was ace, we all got off and did the Monster Mash - the dc were all dressed up and it was genuinely spooky without being too scarey for the little ones.

We also have pagan leaning so it's a festival for us, too.

I don't hate it but I don't see the point of it either. Last few years I've got sweets in for trick or treaters but can't really be bothered this year.

It's not the hating halloween thread that's that tedious, it's the fact every year people say where did all this hype come from, it was never like this a few years ago etc. When as these annual threads show us it has been around for ages now!

Allarmbells...

Why click and comment? Well, partly because it's fun to wind people up and partly because I CAN!!!!!!!

will fuck off now, though, and leave you all to it.

You know what, having read your replies, I think maybe my problem isn't so much that I hate halloween, but that I hate the way Guy Fawkes night has pretty much disappeared, or at best has merged into a big 'end of halloweeen' firework party.

When I was a kid we would all bring old clothes into school to make a guy and spend ages on it. We would spend break times collecting twigs and branches to make a huge bonfire, and the best guy would get pride of place on top of it at the Guy Fawkes party night at school. This didn't usually fall on Guy Fawkes night, so on the real night my mum would cook loads of jacket spuds and we'd make home made toffee; my dad would buy fireworks and we'd do the whole thing again in the back garden, with half the fireworks not going off and my dad nearly getting set alight trying to poke them into action - but hey that was just part of the fun!! All the families in our road seemed to do the same thing and there were fireworks going off all over the place.

Sorry I know I'm going off on a sad old nostalgia trip here, and I'm not remotely anti-american. But Halloween traditions are America's traditions, not ours, whereas Guy Fawkes is a very English tradition. I just think it's sad that it seems to be getting forgotten amongst all the Scream costumes....

As far as I know it's an Irish/ Celtic tradition - the yanks replaced the turnips with pumpkins and introduced candy instead of apples 'n stuff

I love it. We have a party every year and it's great fun.

Where we live the people who are happy to have trick or treaters come round put something on their door or window. If a house doesn't have a Halloween thing visible they don't get them knocking at all.