Halloween is stupid

[yung.carl.jung]

honestly ryika what the **** is wrong with you? calm your 'tism and have some fun good lord. seems to me the good people of OT have not the slightest clue on how to celebrate my favorite holiday. so let me enlighten you.

three years ago my mom dressed up as an aborted fetus. we closed down most of the lights in the house and had everyone be silent. whenever kids would ring the bell my mom would slowly open the door without beeing seen herself and my dad would jump out behind the kids in a gorilla costume, screaming like a proper silverback and shaking the children. It's a miracle none of the children passed out or pissed themselves, really. for the kids it's all about the experience. they want to be scared, they want to experience emotional highs and lows, adrenaline, want to test their

I made some spoopy gore food, we had a huge party, a horror-movie inspired playlist in our mini disco, and an after party horror movie public viewing. that's roughly how most of my halloweens go.

 

[Naeshar]

I agree with Ryika (OP).
A don't particularly like any holiday, imported or not. My main issue is they are socially required and secondary issue is that all the marketing whirrwharr around them.
In my country, the start of November is about "Dušičky" (little Souls, translated). The activity is to visit the graves of our family and friends, and possibly the living ones too. As the atmosphere is grave and solemn, I rather like it. Its much more personal.

Now imagine this very spiritual time is connected to a mad and silly Halloween. Ugh, Halloween is disgusting. Please stop forcing it through our throats!
(I am glad the kids don't go around begging for sweets - its only the stores and ads who push it - and the teenagers wouldn't care either, they would rather go drinking in the night, were it not cold)

 

[Hrothbern]

I agree with Ryika (OP).
A don't particularly like any holiday, imported or not. My main issue is they are socially required and secondary issue is that all the marketing whirrwharr around them.
In my country, the start of November is about "Dušičky" (little Souls, translated). The activity is to visit the graves of our family and friends, and possibly the living ones too. As the atmosphere is grave and solemn, I rather like it. Its much more personal.

Now imagine this very spiritual time is connected to a mad and silly Halloween. Ugh, Halloween is disgusting. Please stop forcing it through our throats!
(I am glad the kids don't go around begging for sweets - its only the stores and ads who push it - and the teenagers wouldn't care either, they would rather go drinking in the night, were it not cold)

Halloween, pagan celtic, is originally about souls. Could be very old and pan-European (Celts came from Asia, through Turkey to western Europe). The souls of the people that died in the last year. The (agricultural) year ending at 31 October. The harvest done, the seedgood ready, the surplus livestock slaughtered.
With christianity all kinds of changes took place varying in different places.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

today's Halloween is just a commercialized shallow husk of a holiday. like valentines day. you either accept that and just roll with it or you bask in your cultural antagonism and jerk yourself off

 

[MaryKB]

today's Halloween is just a commercialized shallow husk of a holiday. like valentines day. you either accept that and just roll with it or you bask in your cultural antagonism and jerk yourself off

You'll find each holiday has its own types of Grinches, right?

I mean it's just one night, and it's fun for children

 

[yung.carl.jung]

You'll find each holiday has its own types of Grinches, right?

I mean it's just one night, and it's fun for children

yeah, for me it's chirstmas. I would just do away with it honestly, but since my mom and my sister are very sentimental about it I drink and enjoy the show.

also I don't think you read my post at all. while I honestly couldn't care less about the children, halloween is still my favorite holiday of the year because I like spooky stuff.

 

[red_elk]

Megyn Kelly has been fired!

What "black face" means - is it just a makeup depicting black character or caricaturical depiction of a black person?
If a latter, then her comment was probably racist. But the idea of using Anne Frank as Halloween character is even more ********.

 

[Naeshar]

Halloween, pagan celtic, is originally about souls. Could be very old and pan-European (Celts came from Asia, through Turkey to western Europe). The souls of the people that died in the last year. The (agricultural) year ending at 31 October. The harvest done, the seedgood ready, the surplus livestock slaughtered.
With christianity all kinds of changes took place varying in different places.

I could agree to celebrating that (thanks!). However I never get this impression from the word "Halloween". Thus I reject it. And treat any who do, same as @yung.carl.jung with his own words: honestly <name> what the **** is wrong with you?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I remember back in the days my mom used to make up her own pagan holidays with highly specific rituals, bonfires, burning your wishes, celebrating the harvest and the seasons ending, celebrating the passing of souls by setting off a burning ghost and letting it fly. we loved it as kids and still keep it up, to some degree, to this day. if I ever have kids I will undoubtedly do the same.

What "black face" means - is it just a makeup depicting black character or caricaturical depiction of a black person?
If a latter, then her comment was probably racist. But the idea of using Anne Frank as Halloween character is even more ********.

dressing up as anne frank is completely legit. halloween is a transgressive holiday, it's there to break boundaries. is it in bad taste? of course. that's what it's all about my man.

I could agree to celebrating that (thanks!). However I never get this impression from the word "Halloween". Thus I reject it. And treat any who do, same as @yung.carl.jung with his own words: honestly <name> what the **** is wrong with you?

halloween refers to the christian "all hallow evenin", it has nothing to do with the celtic tradition as hroth said.

 

[red_elk]

is it in bad taste? of course.

That's what I said. Just used different word, which you don't see behind the stars.

 

[MaryKB]

also I don't think you read my post at all. while I honestly couldn't care less about the children, halloween is still my favorite holiday of the year because I like spooky stuff.

I'm sorry, I did read your post, I just meant you had a positive attitude, and my comment was more for people who didn't see something good like you do.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

If a latter, then her comment was probably racist. But the idea of using Anne Frank as Halloween character is even more egregious.

maybe?

What "black face" means - is it just a makeup depicting black character or caricaturical depiction of a black person?
If a latter, then her comment was probably racist. But the idea of using Anne Frank as Halloween character is even more spectacular.

we're almost there!

What "black face" means - is it just a makeup depicting black character or caricaturical depiction of a black person?
If a latter, then her comment was probably racist. But the idea of using Anne Frank as Halloween character is even more arousing.

I see, so that's what you were trying to say I understand why you'd censor that!

I'm sorry, I did read your post, I just meant you had a positive attitude, and my comment was more for people who didn't see something good like you do.

well huh, in that case I guess I am the dum dum

 

[Hrothbern]

halloween refers to the christian "all hallow evenin", it has nothing to do with the celtic tradition as hroth said.

That's the name... the event given a christian name... just like the chapel build on the chopped holy oak.
The key is the date Oct 31, the end of the year.. that's not christian.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I think a lot of Halloween stuff is awesome; I don't need a day to allow myself to listen to goth music, wear a lot of black, or watch a horror movie, but some people like to have some form of permission to get their freak on. I think they're kind of missing out, the other 364 days, but if someone is uncomfortable being weird, I'm not gonna push them into it (that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?).

As for kids and candy, yeah, I'm kind of a Grinch. A couple of years ago, I literally forgot that it was Halloween until somebody rang my doorbell. That was embarrassing. The neighborhood I live in doesn't have a lot of kids of the right age - lots of grad students, people in their first proper apartment or condo, young couples with infants and toddlers, so most years you wouldn't even know something was going on. You might hear a couple of parties as you walk down the street, but in a neighborhood with a lot of young adults, that's just a Saturday. I liked it when I was a kid, of course, and I was pretty fortunate: The neighborhood I lived in was into it, so there were lots of kids and most houses had some candy. There was one house that actually had a fog machine hidden somewhere on the front porch, back-lit with a dim green lightbulb - about as simple a 'spooky' setup as you could do - and it actually scared us away. I wonder if anyone even rang their doorbell that year. And my mom was a hobbyist seamstress and had fun making me real costumes, so I got lucky there too.

 

[red_elk]

I see, so that's what you were trying to say I understand why you'd censor that!

I was trying to say "retаrded"
Using her image for Halloween may offend some people. I can understand the "breaking boundaries" stuff, etc., but apparently some boundaries are much easier to break than others.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

^ I know, I was just having fun

 

[AmazonQueen]

I work in a school so when Halloween first came around after I started I was dreading it, remembering the pranks we got up to when I was young.
Didn't get a visitor all night that year or the years since (despite leaving in the school cachement area and some of the kids knowing where I live).
Seems parents in our area chaperone their children and just call on the houses of other parents which keeps childless grinches happy.
Teenagers aren't really interested. Trick or treating is dead here

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If I were a teen ager I would get a whole bunch of people together and wander the streets as a zombie hoard.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Reminds me of last year, by the way. There was a girl in a pirate costume costume and I was just about to ask her whether she's too stupid to understand that the concept of Halloween is to dress up in a scary costume. I ultimately didn't, but in my mind I could already see her tear up and that thought made me very happy for a moment.

I'm pretty sure a pirate would have been quite frightening to your average Caribbean merchantman.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

There have been articles in the news over the years of such incidents. Some of those pre-date the internet.

Did you notice the bit in the quoted wikipedia article that said "Commonly, the story appears in the media when a young child dies suddenly after Halloween. Medical investigations into the actual cause of death have always shown that these children did not die from eating candy given to them by strangers."?

My guess is that this kind of thing happens so rarely that throwing out all the apples your kid gets on Halloween is an act of paranoia, not a reasonable precaution.

Worth noting that apples were notably absent in that article as well.

No, it's a reasonable precaution. There are some really sick people out there.

Eh? No it's not it's stupid. You're overly worried about something that has a tiny statistical chance of happening. But despite how worried you are, you send your children out to go and get loads of treats from strangers anyway. Then you allow them to eat all the stuff that's shown to be as equally likely to have been tampered with as apples, but make sure they absolutely don't eat the apples. You think that's reasonable? It sounds like the act of a deranged person to me.