Halloween is the only unabashedly non-Jewish, Muslim, Christian or patriotic holiday on our calendar. It is celebrated at night and children and adults dress up in costumes to walk to houses and get treats or go to parties.

There are a lot of arguments both for and against Halloween being continued. I would like to know your opinion if you'd care to share.

(Personally, I DIG Halloween!)

If i am correct on this, Halloween is a Celtic holiday, like the south American counterpart of day of the dead. It finds its timeline here if correct around the start of winter or a hard time back in those days for where the people lived. Halloween has nothing to do with any current religious ideas, but like those ideas it has manifested itself is some format based on the culture or society, like America. Why Halloween is still around i have no idea. I always like Halloween, i like it these days for the scary movies that get shown on TV in high concentrations.

Some other lore goes on about breaking pumpkins lets evil spirits loose. Though i don’t know about that being part of the original tradition, being they change you know.

If i also remember Halloween is also not fully celebrated like many holidays, in that you don’t get a day off of work or anything. Which i find funny because its primary function or the lore that surrounds it in America is children going door-to-door receiving candy.
It must be a spearhead against socialism

Anyways i look forward to it, though i will be doing my assigned training weekend for that National Guard on the 31st, which is lame but oh well.

Halloween has roots in a lot of different traditions, including the Catholic holidays of Hallowmas or All Saints Day and the Celtic holiday of Samhain.

I love Halloween, and I look forward to an entire month of bad horror flicks, and of course, an opportunity to dress up in my gothic finery.

I love Halloween!!! I decorate my front yard with a fake cemetary, ghoulish decorations, a fogger for added effect and I line the fence by the road with illuminating skulls.

mmmmmwwwwhhhhhhaaaaaa

I also redecorate the inside of my house with a fall motif. I line the fireplace mantel, the coffee table, dining room table, bathrooms, kitchen with fall foliage, scarecrows, pumpkins, corn, gourds, etc. I change the fragrant candles from summery smells to apple cinnamon, baked cookies, pumpkin pie, etc.

From now through Christmas I am at my best! I LOVE this time of year!!!

Halloween

Hallowed Eve

This October celebration is our only recognition of the autumn equinox. The trees and grasses have turned color, shed seed for the spring. We harvest crops and bring cattle to market. In death there is life, in darkness light.

Winter solstice is coming, and in the fall season, we celebrate the death of summer. Too early for ringing winter solstice bells, too late for playing in the verdant hills.

Our dread taken on in effigy, we trick or treat, with the preferred action of treat.

But trick is an option.

Ghosts and skeletons, laughing goblins in orange and black, bats and haunted places, the headstones of souls gone by.

The scent of humus falling asleep. Whistling elk and rutting deer, flying game birds afield, gun powder flash.

A ranch hand astride equine flesh pauses to hear.

Feasts will come--but for now, work needs to be done.

And memories in orange and black, severe but for the laughter of children.

Trick? Or treat. Happy Halloween!

I LOVE Halloween!!! It's one of my favorite holidays! It lets the child in all of us be able to come out without being judged. It's a time for creativity and fun! We all need a night that everyone can let their hair down and just let their inner freak take over!

That's small compared to what i do. A few years ago, the city had to dig up small parts of our yard. I've used that to put in spring-activivated decorations to act on motion detection to pop out of the ground. Very fun stuff. I can re-set the "traps" to their original position so the trick can be used again by remote control.

Scares the life out of many even after using it for 3 years

Every year I've done "Thriller" for the Halloween party at the club I perform at. I get about 6 people and teach them the routine and they dress up as zombies. It's always a fun show and everyone LOVES it!

Halloween is fun. Kids here now do trick or treat, which nobody did even 15 years ago - it's one American import that I heartily approve of. In these days of dormitory towns and fractured neighbourhoods, it's about the only time of year that kids (and their watching parents), especially in urban areas, get to meet their neighbours unless there is something to complain about, so all power to it.

In Britain it used to take second place to November 5, "Bonfire Night", which commemorates the 16th Century Catholic "Gunpowder Plot" to blow up the Houses of Parliament while the Protestant King was in situ, for which the unlucky Guy Fawkes was the fall guy (forgive the pun), having been caught red-handed.

When I was a kid, this was the only time of year that we saw fireworks (and the casualty wards were packed with the evidence of our unfamiliarity with them). It was also the only night of the year when we were allowed to run around in the dark waving torches (=flashlights) in numbers (remember, no trick or treat), so was one of my favourite nights of the year. These days, fireworks are ubiquitous - every weekend a hotel near my parents' house has a huge display to mark the wedding receptions they regularly hold there.

So I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can see that, between Halloween and the regular fireworks displays through the year, today's kids get all the experiences that I used to get - possibly more. On the other, I think it's a shame that a uniquely British event seems to have become something of a damp squib (pun intended).

Without question I look forward to Halloween. Just as my operating name here is often considered to be both fun and somewhat controversial, the same is true for my costumes the last couple of years. With stints as a talking reproductive organ and convicted pedophile priest behind me the last couple of years, I'm again pushed for creativity by friends and family hosting parties this year. Hopefully they'll be as amused as years past by my (no pun intended) coming portrayal of an adult filmmaking star in training, complete with 80's hair, head and wrist sweat bands, grotesque gag teeth and a soon-to-be purchased prosthetic sexual organ...

I love dressing up and making people laugh, so yes, I absolutely dig Halloween. I'll take the costume parties over the candy any day though.

Clarification:
Two years ago, as a talking reproductive organ, I spoke with a speech impediment to represent an organ afflicted with ED in search of a magical blue pill to cure all my woes... was pretty well appreciated by most.
Last year featured the frock of a priest coupled with an externally visible plastic rear and handcuffs, appreciated even by some of my most Catholic of friends.

I remember when I was very young I used to be terrified of halloween and RUN into a closet when the big kids would come to the door in scary monster costumes

Then, of course, I got with it and LOVED getting all dressed up and getting lots of candy. Afterwhich came halloween PARTIES! yeehaa!

there's nothing wrong with halloween. It's benign and fun for all ages

I like Halloween because I get to wear stupid cloths in public and get drunk at a bar with friends...

(edited to include)

...somehow I see this as different from a normal weekend night out.

Sounds like an average night in a college town

Halloween is good for kids to defy their parents' orders of no sweets. That's why i love it when i was younger

[/QUOTE]Just as my operating name here is often considered to be both fun and somewhat controversial, the same is true for my costumes the last couple of years.[QUOTE]


Hehe, offensive halloween costumes are great, especially because some people take them so seriously. A few years back, this one guy I knew got a Superman costume and a wheelchair, and had his friends wheel him around, LOL. This year, my wife, being almost 8 months pregnant, is going as a nun. It's going to be great. hehehe.

Heh, a friend of mine did that when she was pregnant on Halloween.

I love Halloween: candy, horror movies and dressing up- what could be better.

I have a question for those of you who stayed home and handed out candy - did any of the kids dress up?

Of the 30-35 we've had so far only two were dressed in actual costumes. Another handful of others were wearing what looked like hand-painted shirts with ghosts, etc. (like you'd make in school at the class Halloween party). The rest were wearing regular everyday clothes.

Is this odd?.

Jaime,

I'm seeing quite a bit of that myself, this year. It's kind of broken down into two camps. Kids 6 or 8 and under in costume, kids over that age, barely bothering. Maybe the kids these days are just too jaded to be into it as much.

All the kids wore costumes so far, but it's still pretty early here. Perhaps the little ones dress up, and the older kids aren't as into it. I had a great time this year.... I'm usually not so into Halloween.

For the first time in my life, some kids knocked on my door for halloween. Too bad we had nothing to give them. I was suggesting peanuts but.. well... you know...

I live in a Townhouse. There are 34 buildings. We have a park across from us maybe 100 ft. There are many kids in this park everyday. So I was looking at all the kids thinking we need alot of candy. In the park there are a times 20-30 kids. . It was my last day of vacation so I thought good I will be here for all the kids. We had 16. I was giving 4-5 things at a time because I bought what we like. Hey I didn't have to treat or treat!
More for me!

You know, I noticed the same thing. A lot of 12 - 14 year old boys
with orange or white t-shirts. They just want the candy!!!

The spirit of Halloween seems to have been jaded by all the
news stories about razors in apples and weirdos in waiting.

A lot of parents with little ones (like myself) just take their
kids to the houses where they know the people. Or better
yet, to the mall, where they can expect candy that hasn't
been tampered with.

It's not like the good ole days when you could go trick-or-treating
for hours, with tons of other kids, and load up on all the delicious treats!

I took a 12-year-old boy, my 9-year-old daughter and her 7-year-old friend trick or treating through the neighborhood and to the nearby 7/11 where they were treating costumed people to free mini-Slurpees.

We were three witches (yes, at age 50 I still believe in dressing up! ) and a Grim Reaper (the boy). We saw a few adolescent boys not wearing costumes roaming around with pillowcases in groups of 3 and 4. Virtually all of the young females of that age group were dressed up in some sort of costume, if they were out.

Maybe it's a regional thing. But it was fun, and if the weather had been a little warmer, we would have trick or treated for the full two hours our community recommended.

I have sen the no costume trick or treaters for years. I don't know if jaded is the right word. As I live in this neighborhood longer and get to know more of the kids better they will be hearing from me about what's wrong with kids these days and how I used to have to walk 12 miles in the snow uphill both ways to school.

Another thing that amused me was going to McDonalds and a gas station last night and having the stores post a no masks allowed sign. My wife said something like " I suppose they're not concerned about little kids wearing masks.

It is apparently a good night for hamburgler tricks.