when did halloween become such a big thing

(for kids)

 

?

but honestly the intensity of excitement and preparation seems to be ridiculous*

 

 

*word to the wise: B&M have an amazing selection of outfits, accoutrements, sweets, ghostly apparitions very cheaply

 

I ventured into asda yesterday after years of ...well...not doing so and noted with horror that they have two full aisles with halloween guff. 

who buys that nonsense. 

It isn't an Americanism.  Hallowe'en is Celtic.  Pointing to the commercialisation of it and saying it's American is as stupid as claiming Christmas is American because of Santa Clause.

Let's be honest, Guy Fawkes / bonfire night is fooking shit.  Halloween is way better - you mash-up a bonfire, fireworks, dressing up (scary for kids, and pretty much anything with a "sexy" prefix for women), trick or treating, pumpkin-carving.

Basically - Halloween is ossum.

Clubbers and Hoolie evidently do. I got a lovely bowl for Halloween and a small witch ornament last year from Home Sense. We shall be out this year otherwise I would hand out stuff as there's tons of kids around ours who come out for it. I shall make do with the local Halloween themed ParkRun the Saturday before.

I don't mind buying sweets and sharing it out with not so pesky kids. I can also understand a parent or an elder sister or brother hanging about to ensure kids are safe. What is off bounds and utterly contemptible is that parent or big bother or sister also asking for sweets. 

sexy zombie, sexy vampire, sexy sex worker, sexy dentist, sexy estate agent, sexy (yummy) mummy, sexy transformer, sexy nun, sexy doesn't have a headache tonight woman, sexy plumber, sexy schoolteacher, sexy driving instructor.

I was chatting to somebody the other day about this and pondering why it was bigger in NI than in England.  Came to conclusion that guy fawkes night dilutes it in UK and celebrating by burning a catholic in NI could be seen as sectarian.

 

Halloween has always been a thing.

I remember being a kid in the 70s and dressing up as a ghost in a sheet and bobbing apples.

it's waaaaaaay better now. It's a massive thing where I live and great fun.

I'm Bellatrix Lestrange this year

I don't find them especially entertaining, and watching them safely always involves standing in the freezing cold for ages in the middle of a crowd of tedes. I *hate* garden firework displays with an absolute passion. They are lethal. There's no way I am setting off high explosives around my kids fgs.

I have never liked either festival, always dark wet and cold and the harbringer of months of winter in my mind.

Halloween has undoubtedly grown due to the American influence.  Cant say it bothers me how other people celebrate it but I am not particularly happy that it gives shops yet another opportunity to sell mountains of wasteful tat before they fill their shelves with Christmas tat.  At Bonfire Night is relatively tat free.

I honestly wish they'd ban the sale of fireworks entirely, including sparklers which are some of the most hazardous in terms of setting fire to the hydrocarbon-based costumes that children are encouraged to wear for these festivals. NOPE.

I sense that individual firework "displays" are gradually moving from 5 November to 31 December. Incidently if you think it is dangerous here try NYE in Germany, where people set off rockets horizontally in the street....

Fireworks are really bad for air quality - especially in damp and misty weather.  They banned them in India a few years back, IIRC.  Which was a bold move.

Tell u what fireworks I like.

The New Year ones in London. I like watching them on television.

Mind you, fireworks or no, what kind of fookwit would go into central London for NYE anyway?

I honestly wish they'd ban the sale of fireworks entirely, including sparklers which are some of the most hazardous in terms of setting fire to the hydrocarbon-based costumes that children are encouraged to wear for these festivals. NOPE.

I once got hit by a lit firework (not at a firework display, by some moron on the beach) and I think you're being a ridiculous killjoy.

Love Halloween.  A couple of years ago I made up a gravestone out of 2x4 ply and grey chalk paint, got the mrs to calligraphy in black "RIP JACK THE RIPPER - ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE".

I stuck it in the front lawn where there was a conveniently placed grave sized patch of earth where we had recently had a new soak-away put in and put a skull, arm bones and shins/feet bones as if erupting from the grave.  A big car torch under a stone to light it up.  My FIL (a dr of physics, retired) had spent the week before rigging up a sound system that emitted a proximity triggered "mwa haaa haaa" type noise when people approached the grave up the drive.

Lots of screams and rather shocked pale trick or treaters arriving at the door.

I wanted to hang a fake body from one of the trees with a proper hangman's noose but the mrs said that was going too far.

Love pumpkin carving. 

But the best bit is the 13/4/5 year olds arriving a bit later in the evening, looking all spotty and embarrassed as they collect a mini bag of haribos and a chewit

Laz - I did that once with an American girlfriend and it was an epic experience.  Finally managed to somehow get back to Fulham where I then lost £20 drunkenly playing pool. 

I think it’s worth doing the central London NYE thing once in your life just to say you’ve done it, but it was a humongous level of tedium trying to get back to where I lived.

Waaay back in the seventies when I was little I used to have a Halloween party for my birthday, we loved it, dressed in black cape and everyone made a witch hat. No trick or treating ofc, hadnt heard of that. And we had proper glass lanterns. Played bob apple and (inexplicably) call my bluff, compered by father. We drew ghoulish chalk drawings on the inside of the garage and had it in there. Until eventually Christine Baker fell off a step and broke her leg one year, it stopped after that.

I am not a Halloween person.

 

every year at my junior school we would have a special assembly on how trick or treating was begging and shouldn’t be contemplated, and if trick or treaters came to our house we should call the police.

All these people power-w**king on about the celtic tradition of Hallowe’en are missing entirely the point that, whatever the origins of the festival (most modern festivals actually having multiple origins) pretty much everything about the modern practice of Hallowe’en in Britain was imported from the US. 

Tl dr but it first became a big ents thing when the Amurcans got their hands on it and it’s become big over here as every last excuse to ape the US, dress up, spend cash, and shout a bit has been mined to sell stuff to people. And it’s still disapproved of in some churches as being a gross commercialisation of the festival around All Saints Day. I agree with that. If you want to run around being pagan you can do it any day.

Laz - Halloween has been the same in Scotland for eons (except now we use pumpkins instead of turnips sometimes which, tbf, is a handy innovation)

Some people still think it's evil and get in a huff

I think only the English trick or treat but you need something to fill the cultural void.

Maybe the northerners guised now I think about it.