Sanitized Halloween

[newfoundland]

Halloween is not so much celebrated here. When it is it is usually with a children's party with games like apple bobbing and snap dragon. A supper of bangers and mash and rounding off with a good ghost story. I disapprove of trick or treating as it seems to me to give youngsters the impression that it is acceptable to threaten in order to get 'paid off'. I can't think of anything more appalling than children roaming round a car park helping themselves to sweets out of people's cars. As for churches getting in on the act, ridiculous nonsense! The correct day to remember the dead is the day after, All Souls Day, November 1st. Halloween is a pagan festival and as such no business of any Christian Church.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

Every year as a kid in England I went trick-or-treating with friends. Plenty popular enough to fill up a pillowcase. We did get some apples though, a practice that died out a bit earlier in the US, possibly due to the fear of razor blades placed in goodies (I can only imagine a manufacturer of wrapped sweets came up with that one...). Fear was largely limited to unattended baggage. When returning as a teen, I did notice that many expressed great fear about everything from 'class warfare', to immigrants, to teens, so it does seem that fear of "others" has increased over there rather sharply.

I have some bad news about Easter and Christmas.

 

[dainerra]

I was really disappointed in Halloween this year. I was prepared for 120 children and we got 50...so that means I have a HUGE bowl of leftover candy, plus the haul that my daughter brought home. I'll have to find an outlet for all that candy, which will probably end up harder than it should be...people are suspicious when somebody tries to give something away. I guess I can't blame them though.

many groups are collecting the candy (a friend who is a dentist in another state is one) to send in care packages to the troops overseas.

 

[AlexMalix]

There are still some of us out there (perhaps we are few and far between) who absolutely abhor the holiday and everything it stands for. Halloween is not a "children's holiday"; it is anything but that for anyone who has actually studied it in any sort of depth. I for one am beyond appalled at the outpouring of 'Christian' churches out there who hold events on this day and call it "Fall Festival" or something similar. I neither condone nor support that. Quite frankly, I'm elated that the numbers have practically dwindled down to nothing in regard to the throngs of trick-or-treaters scouring the streets...and hope it continues.

uhhh, you know Halloween gets it's name from "All Hallow's Eve" which was followed by "All Saint's Day" and was created by the Catholic Church to bring people away from Paganism, right? Yes, clearly it's appalling church's have a Fall Festival, but only because they forgot they invented the holiday to begin with

 

[redhen]

uhhh, you know Halloween gets it's name from "All Hallow's Eve" which was followed by "All Saint's Day"  and was created by the Catholic Church to bring people away from Paganism, right?  Yes, clearly it's appalling church's have a Fall Festival, but only because they forgot they invented the holiday to begin with

Yeah..and then those church complainers go right home and start sinning too..lmbo!

 

[redhen]

In this area, it means that this year we had kids from other areas come, hence, we actually got to enjoy trick or treaters for the first time in four years. My original thought that for our area the closed micro-culture is what is behind the lack of candy hunters was probably correct. Basically, I am happy to be moving.

I'm dying to know more about this closed micro culture..what is it about them that's "closed and micro"?

 

[Ferrret]

If I had a guess, I would say a micro culture is a culture that presents itself on a small scale, unlike a full city or nation it may be only within a neighborhood. Micro cultures seem to consist of less than 1000 people and their group is closely tied to their specific habits and community. Gated communities are micro cultures, where everyone trims their lawn and hedges the same way, paints their house in the same color palette, keeps a similar theme of lawn decorations, lives the 'cookie cutter' life.
Closed would mean that they are either unwelcoming of new people into the community or very resistant to changes to their culture, usually a combination of the two, since new people might go against the grain and offset their happy lives with new customs. HoA's tend to be closed micro cultures, since they have strict, rarely changing rules for how their community behaves.

When it comes to Halloween, some neighborhoods don't celebrate, and when someone who does celebrate moves in it can create quite a stir. The sudden appearance of ghosts, jack o' lanterns and skeletons can upset neighbors who are against the holiday and lead to becoming an outcast within your own neighborhood. Some make take more extreme actions of calling the police or city citing ordinance violations of some kind, in an effort to stop the 'offender' from setting up a Halloween display. Others simply make their displeasure known in a more passive way, usually leading to the 'offender' being shunned by the neighborhood.
The person who is singled out can either keep celebrating and try to brush off the irritated neighbors, stop celebrating to appease them or simply move away to some place more welcoming.

Halloween can be a very polarizing holiday in some areas. When an entire neighborhood has their porch lights off for Halloween, it can make being the only celebrator on the block pretty depressing. Kids rarely visit the single house in the neighborhood that hands out candy.
It all comes down to an 'insider' v 'outsider' thing, us v. them mentality. When kids that are obviously from outside the neighborhood come around on Halloween, it bothers people who are protective of their lifestyle and stubborn to the very idea of change. If those kids will come around on Halloween, then what's next? People like them could move into the area and 'ruin' our happy way of life. It's not a pleasant way of thinking, but it's how some small communities end up.

 

[newfoundland]

What is clear from these posts is that people love intrigue. Maybe we all like to be scandalised by the behaviour of others. We take exception to little things that are really of no consequence. Closed communities on the face of it would seem to be unhealthy, but I have found that geographical isolation for example does not necessarily make people close themselves off from the outside world. A good example of this are the communities that inhabit the far Shetland Islands off Scotland. They are often tiny communities and sometimes more or less cut off from the mainland in the worst winter storms. They are however without exception warm and welcoming and certainly outward looking. Perhaps people living in gated communities are shutting themselves off from a larger population that they mistrust?