Halloween: Classic or Dud?

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For Tom, since he brought it up on the Easter thread. Well?

― Ally, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Oh. My. God. When I landed in the States, I was 9. You've got to understand, there was no trick or treating in the UK (I don't know about now, but we never did it then... come to think of it, I've never seen a trick or treater, except in St. Johns Wood, which is a very American neighbourhood anyway).

So, I get to the States, and there's this holiday where you get to DRESS UP IN COSTUME then go running around your neighbourhood AFTER DARK and people have to GIVE YOU CANDY!!!!!

Whoever invented Halloween should be given a medal. Best holiday ever. And when I found out about its dark pagan past, that only made it even better.

― masonic boom, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Classic since its a few days fomr my birthday so I always had Halloween/birthday. Yet, I am not goth.

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Why is Halloween sometimes spelt: Hallowe'en?

Dud by the way. In Britain at least. I mean it's just rubbish, gangs of children (ages 5-13) go from door to door saying "trick or treat". Which is nonesense as a) they never seem to play a trick and b) I never give them a treat. Because a) they are always dressed in appalingly shoddy home-made fancy dress and armed with plastic tridents bought from the newsagent, and b) because they make me get up and miss bloody Top of the Pops! The swines!

For the last time: I HAVEN'T GOT ANY SWEETS!

― D*A*V*I*D*M, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I love Halloween, btw. A perfect excuse to dress like a moron and run around doing ludicrious crap. I can't wait to throw a halloween party this year, I already bought a freakin' costume though I doubt I'll wear it.

― Ally, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Halloween is godlike. It's the only holiday where it's socially acceptable to show up at random people's houses without clothing.

― Dan Perry, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Now that's just taking it too far. But I'll still invite you to my Halloween party.

― Ally, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

halloween in concept: classic. halloween in practice(for me at least): DUD. i dont think ive had a good halloween since i was like 10. its something that gets way too hyped up and is always a let down. like fucking new years. if i could obliterate one holiday it would definately be new years eve. and i think hallowe'en is sometimes spelled like that because of the orgins of the word: all hallow's eve, e'en being short for evening id assume? someone else probably knows more than i.

― amy, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Amy: I think you're right re: the origins of "Hallowe'en".

Ally: Marriage has drastically curtailed my boughts of public nudity, but if you can get Joei to strip down then I get a free pass to follow suit. (At least, that's what my argument will be.)

― Dan Perry, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

It is a classic in idea, but I haven't had many good ones. I remember we had to wear our costumes to school in elementary school one year (age 6 I think) and the older kids made fun of us-I still feel the shame. After that I refused to ever dress up again. I did have some fun in the teenage years scaring shop owners and throwing stuff at people/things with my hooligan friends.

― tOM p, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

"appallingly shoddy home-made fancy dress": years ago (I was still at college), a coupla days before Guy Fawkes, I was walking down some suburban road and two small tykes were coming towards me. They were on their way to put a Guy together: so far all they had was a PAIR OF JEANS FOLDED IN A BOX. They saw me, saw that I;'d seen and twigged what was afoot, and took a chance:
Tykes: Penny for the Guy, mister?
mark s (laughing a lot): That's a not a Guy, that's trousers in a box!!
Tykes: Naah! Naah!! Go on, mister, penny for the Guy, penny for the Guy, go on, penny for the Guy!
mark s: Jeezus, when I made Guys at least we finished making them before we started charging the public...!
Tykes: Gaah. That was the olden days. [We part]

― mark s, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

It would have been bizarre if it was Stevie Trousers in a box.

― DG, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The more I learn about you, Tom P, the more I wonder...

Classic, natch. Candy = GOOD! Fruit = BAD! And I had a huge Pac-Man costume I went in for 1982 Halloween. Loved that thing.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I love halloween . I always had the best costumes. They were odd and sexual.

― anthony, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I once worked with a girl whose parents were staunchly anti-Halloween and every Oct. 31st she'd have to hide inside her house with all the lights off so that nobody would bother them. I felt so bad for her. Her parents weren't creepy Fundamentalists or anything, as far as I know, just ordinary Reform Jews.

Loved Halloween as a child, and I pretty much love it now, although I'm really bad at carving pumpkins. When I was in the service industry, though, I *hated* it. People in costumes are very aggressive and irritating (and cheap!) when they hit the bars. And I've seen enough bad, predictable drag queens to last me a lifetime.

― Arthur, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The day after Halloween is the day carol singers start coming round in Hackney. They sing we wish you a merry christmas through very fast up to a hapy new year and then say 'gis some money'.

Halloween, never really affected me, guy fawkes rules though. Where else but england would we hold a festival to celebrate the burning alive of a Catholic would tried to blow up a king.

― Ed, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I'm glad we don't like Halloween as much as the Americans do.

It's good when you're a kid and probably good if you're a child snatcher too but the feast-of-fools license it gives for children to harass you is dud especially in one particular aspect - trick-or- treating in the PUB. FOR THE SAKE OF FUCK NO. You would not let children in to GIVE you money to buy a drink so please o publican do not let them in to take money away from punters with menaces. It's like for one day of the year every kid in London is allowed to act like the Kray Twins.

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have to hand no copy of THE LORE AND LANGUAGE OF SCHOOLCHILDREN (Iona & Peter Opie, essential reading) so this is shout to Northern-born Brits: what date is MISCHIEF NIGHT? Close to Halloween, but not Halloween itself? Or same night? Such comedy pranks catalogued as SETTING FIRE TO YR NEIGHBOURS DRAINPIPE hoho... "Trick or Treat" is only an American NAME, not an American IMPORT... Of course as Mr Pub=Evil, I can only sit back and laff, as satan's micro-imps sweep voraciously thru the saloon to wreck the snug...

― mark s, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

they only just started "having" halloween out here. thanks, advertising industry.

― duane, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Don't know about mischief night, but I read somewhere that trick or treating originated in Shropshire and was taken to the US when some Shropshire people emigrated there. So there are lots of Englsh people denouncing it for being an American import when it in fact it was English all along. Anyone from Wem or Shrewsbury like to confirm or deny this? Ok, it's a bit of a long shot.....

― MarkH, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

This is crazy, because we never trick or treated when we were in Herts as wee tots in the early 70s. My mum looked it up in a book and found out that you are supposed to make jack'o'lanterns out of pumpkins or turnips. Seeing as how we couldn't get anything as exotic as a pumpkin back in the dark days before Thatcher, we used a turnip. And people LAUGHED at us for having a turnip in the window.

Now I come back and it's everywhere? I feel cheated out of 9 years of being a hooligan!!!

I hated when people gave us fruit. My mum wouldn't let us eat any fruit we'd been given in case anyone had stuck razors or pins in it- there was a bad rash of that in our neighbourhood. Crazy fuckers!

― masonic boom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Mischief night, or Miggy night as it was known in my patch of Yorkshire, always took place on November 4th, the day before Guy Fawkes night.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Well, oddly enough, *I'm* from Wem or Shrewsbury (the later, in fact: Wem = butt of all Shropshire in-jokes — site of the Treacle Mines etc), and can't confirm or deny. But I grew up pretty much nestling in green nowhere: kidz in masks wd have had to walk a LONG way thru break and briar to pitch up against our door. Mischief Night is NOT mid-Shropshire: I recall regretting this when small, and reading the Opie book. But yes: basic thrust true — this is the Return of the Repressed, a kiddeie-prole wild-hunt invading Hampstead Garden Suburb by way of ET.

(Note entry into so-called "postmodern" cycle of folkways: I learned my playground chants FROM A SCHOLARLY BOOK!!)

― mark s, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Halloween was classic as it's my birthday, now it's turning into a dud.

Mischief night, yup 4th November. Mostly harmless (?) fun, but Mal Hussein the Shopkeeper who had a shop in the Ryedale estate of Lancaster was regularly subjected to increased racial abuse on that night. Firebombing asians, not my idea of mischief.

― Billy Dods, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

What Tom said about kids in pubs. We were in a pub in Kilburn once and a couple of kids came in not asking for money but demanding it. One of the only times I went trick or treating as a kid the villagers were baffled (and some of the elderly ones seemed quite frightened) and some gave us money. Most had no sweeties in so gave us digestive biscuits etc. Madness.

However I now use Hallowe'en as an excuse to buy bags of fun size chocs and guzzle them myself. We had a goths' Hallowe'en party once too where the boys in the house used all my black eyeliner (very ineptly) and they ended up chucking flour on the floor. Kerrazy.

― Emma, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

When I was fourteen I answered the door to some much older trick or treaters, refused to give them money, and they sprayed spray-paint in my eyes. Great trick, thanks for that. Could've been blinded!

― Paul Strange, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Halloween is pants...u get some horrible little brats doing trick or treating about 4 days before. I much prefer Guy Fawkes.

― james e l, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Trick-or-treaters that are taller than the person giving out the candy = dud. One of these years I'm going to put up a height bar at about 5 feet -- you'll have to walk underneath it w/o stooping in order to get any goodies.

― Jeff Wright, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

We used to hand out beer n' qualudees to the neighboorhood kids. Kept em happy and the vandalism down.

― Mike Hanle y, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Have you read the Opie book on the folklore of children . It is an anthology of playground dirtyness. Davids parents would not celebrate Haloween until he cinvinced them it had no religous basis anymore. I think he was 9 or 10. We , for that reason , give the most candy . We buy canss of pop, regular sizer choclaye bars, pocky and floss. The floss is also Davids idea. The pocky is mine. We also decorate. Like last year we had a coffin with a pop up skelton, a grave yard, two hanged men and a sound system that creeked and screamed and yelled. We dressed up .

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

When I lived in Spain they didn't do Hallowe'en but were very into All Saints' Day (1 November in case you didn't know). One of the people I was teaching English explained that on this day 'we visit our relatives who are dead' which was a great way of saying 'we all go down the cemetery'.

― Emma, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Dead relatives over here must like Woodpecker a lot then given the amount of offerings they get

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Guy Fawkes is better because it involves the ceremonial burning of an effigy representing all catholic traitors ever. Long live state sanctioned intolerance! Hurrah!

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Hallowe'en is classic simply because Peter Hitchens called it "an inappropriate American import that doesn't belong here ... it's not part of our culture, blah 1955, blah Harold Macmillan, blah stodgy food ..."

Anything that Hitchens says "doesn't belong here" I have to say DOES. So, although I don't like it much myself, it therefore becomes FUCKING CLASSIC.

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

First of all, I'd love to see Robin Vs. his nemesis Peter Hitchens. That would be beyond classic.
Halloween, eh? Never been much of a fan, not ever having gone trick or treating, so it's not even as good as Easter. However, the last time I pulled was at a Halloween party, back in 1998...1998? OH MY GOD! I am sad.

― DG, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have to visit England one day. If it's anything like what Robin describes, everywhere I go there will be bitter old people mumbling to themselves about 1955. I'll walk around the countryside blasting Jay-Z out loud and concerned city people will magically appear from everywhere to tell me that I'm an anomaly of nature for listening to those unpleasant urban noises. I can't wait.

― Patrick, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The same thing happens in alberta .

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I work for a large financial company where Halloween is the end-all, be-all of holidays. We even have a "committee" (of which I am the unfortunate chairperson, railroaded into it because I am a newbie) dedicated to winning the skit competition (which basically means liquoring up the judges until they say "You win!"). I'm tempted to say Classic, because I'm *really* looking forward to seeind the CEO of a multi-million dollar stock firm plastered out of his head trying to decide who'd got the best smurf costume, but at this point, I'm quite sick of the obsessively planning that has to go into this stupid thing. Dud.

― Danielle, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

ten years pass...

getting ready for our party...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6058/6292801501_fe2d6bb393.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6060/6292800983_1a33f46921.jpg

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6112/6292800265_552fb09099.jpg

― glorified version of appellate court (get bent), Sunday, 30 October 2011 00:38 (thirteen years ago) link

Halloween Hello Kitties r so cute!

― Janet Snakehole (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 30 October 2011 01:10 (thirteen years ago) link

I see Halloween as teetering on a cusp between getting co-opted as degraded, ersatz, commercialized bore and being a pretty grebt holiday. It partakes of both about equally these days.

― Aimless, Sunday, 30 October 2011 02:04 (thirteen years ago) link

Halloween: über-classic

Halloween falling on a Monday this year: major dud

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/74/GreatPumpkin.jpg/220px-GreatPumpkin.jpg

just watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" last week to get into the spirit of things

Djed a Halloween techno party at a noise warehouse space in Baltimore last night, lotsa rad costumes in effect

― the tune is space, Sunday, 30 October 2011 02:38 (thirteen years ago) link

seven years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQOPC417A_w

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 4 October 2019 15:32 (five years ago) link

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