HAPPY HALLOWEEN

[AlexanderDitto]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEEENNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Deedles]

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone has a good day!

[Can't Wear Hats]

[Prospero101]

Herpy Herpaween. I'll be working all day and into the evening, but y'all have a good time.

Come November 1, I'm gonna be DROWNING IN CHOCOLATE.

[Mums]

I'll be playing Alien Isolation with a friend in a dark room. Have been able to not really read or watch anything about it just so I get to see it with fresh eyes!

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I'll be being my usual self alone at home (well with parents screaming at each other due to the stress of packing to go away to visit relatives).

I could go to a Light Party but I didn't enjoy last year's.

So I'll be at home, being me.

Not doing anything spoopy because strangely enough, I don't enjoy that either.

[Metcarfre]

[AlexanderDitto]

[Robo4900]

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Am I the only one who hates Halloween?


I mean, what is it even about? Apart from giving the sweet and tacky goods industry and excuse to sell us stuff?


And you know, I've just seen some 'trick or treaters' pass my house, and I swear they weren't even dressed up that much. I'm not going to give you anything, especially if you're going to be half assed about it.

*Retreats into my curmudgeon-hole*

[Prospero101]

Oh, I can't bloody stand Halloween, but I don't see much point in ranting about it. No offense.

[charl]

Am I the only one who hates Halloween?


I mean, what is it even about? Apart from giving the sweet and tacky goods industry and excuse to sell us stuff?


And you know, I've just seen some 'trick or treaters' pass my house, and I swear they weren't even dressed up that much. I'm not going to give you anything, especially if you're going to be half assed about it.

*Retreats into my curmudgeon-hole*

I don't hate it or anything, but I live in a country were it isn't really celebrated so I don't get the point of it at all.

I mean, we do have All Saint's Day which is about at the same time, but it's mainly a religious thing that no one really cares about.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I dislike Halloween too, but a thread celebrating Halloween isn't an appropriate place to rant about it.

There might be an irony that this might be the only time ever some people actually give things away.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

It wasn't really a rant.

The first part was asking someone who did like it/celebrate it why they did so, the second part (which admittedly sounded like a rant) was merely lamenting the people who do 'celebrate' where I live don't really get into it.

Dress up, go wild, but just don't dress in black and say it's a costume...'cause it kind of isn't.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I like pumpkin carving. I just wish I liked eating pumpkin, so I would actually do it.

[Metcarfre]

Am I the only one who hates Halloween?

You're never the only one

I mean, what is it even about? Apart from giving the sweet and tacky goods industry and excuse to sell us stuff?

What is any holiday, divorced from its religious or cultural underpinnings, even about? It's socially acceptable to dress in a costume and eat candy, isn't that awesome?

[hascow]

This seems relevant to Halloween

[Deedles]

In Sweden Halloween, or a more apt translation of what we call it, All Hallows Eve, is a day where we pay respects to the dead, put candles and flowers on their grave.

So, while I can't speak for anyone else from anywhere else, that is the point of 'Halloween'.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Am I the only one who hates Halloween?


I mean, what is it even about? Apart from giving the sweet and tacky goods industry and excuse to sell us stuff?


And you know, I've just seen some 'trick or treaters' pass my house, and I swear they weren't even dressed up that much. I'm not going to give you anything, especially if you're going to be half assed about it.

*Retreats into my curmudgeon-hole*

I don't hate it or anything, but I live in a country were it isn't really celebrated so I don't get the point of it at all.

I mean, we do have All Saint's Day which is about at the same time, but it's mainly a religious thing that no one really cares about.

Actually, that's where Hallowe'en, or All Hallows Even to give it its full title, comes from- it's the night before All Saints, where all the monsters and demons get up to roam the night to prey on people before the Saints come along the next day to bless everyone (in the Christian mythos at least, to some greater or lesser extent)

I probably got that wrong, (EDIT: Deedles' sounds like a more likely version; a day to think of the dead) but that's how my parents explained it to me way back when.

As somebody who kinda dislikes dressing up (for pretty much anything- I don't even like dressing 'well' for the sake of looking good, because I don't value it as a personality trait and dislike how it makes people look), I've never really 'got' Hallowe'en, and found it very strange when I came to uni how seriously people took it (although lets face it, students will never miss an excuse to party). I don't have any problem with it especially, I just find it rather dull.

[Deedles]

I think it was originally to appease the dead so that they wouldn't rise, or some such. I can't remember the details. Halloween has never been big in my family(despite me loving all the dark and scary things when I was younger), but putting candles and flowers on graves of our dead relatives is something we've done on that day for as long as I can remember.

[elcalen]

I love Hallowe'en. I might go as far as calling it my favourite holiday. (Christmas can just get effed.)

It's not really a part of my cultural heritage. All Saints Day here in Finland is primarily a religious thing, which most people don't really care about (apart from cursing the fact that shops are closed, for some reason). But the influence of American popular culture is pretty huge and a lot of people these days have Hallowe'en parties and stuff.

Personally, I just love horror, I'm fascinated by the occult, I love autumn and dark nights... all things that are heavily associated with Hallowe'en, so appreciating it is obviously a natural thing for me to do. (I also identify as a neopagan and Wiccan, even though I haven't really actively practised in a while, so Samhain aka Hallowe'en has some special significance for me as a 'holy' day...)

As for this Hallowe'en, I'm spending it at home on my own, pretty low-key. I just lit some candles and put on the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack (one of my favourite atmospheric soundtracks of all time), and opened a bottle of Captain Morgan Black Spiced...

[empath]

Yeah, I think Deedles has nailed the origin...which seemed to have morphed into giving the appeasements to children pretending to be monsters...

Anyways, like anything, Corporatism has gotten its grease-dripping talons into it, and is milking it for every bit of rampant consumerism it can get away with.

But enough of that; let's stay light-hearted and try THIS

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I'll be honest. It's a bigger crime for commercialization to bastardise religious holidays than commercialization of now demoted to be "folklore" holiday.
Maybe an irony in that case?
Commercial Christmas is a huge irony. The birth of the man who drove out people selling in a temple.

[charl]

In Sweden Halloween, or a more apt translation of what we call it, All Hallows Eve, is a day where we pay respects to the dead, put candles and flowers on their grave.

So, while I can't speak for anyone else from anywhere else, that is the point of 'Halloween'.

Also Swedish. I think very few people care about the holiday these days. Some college aged people use it as an excuse to drink, but to be fair they do that with everything so...

Anyway, the origins of Halloween in the anglophone context is actually slightly more complex than that. All Hallow's Eve is the origin of the name, of course, but the whole dressing up thing and the associations with the spooky and whatnot supposedly come from ancient Celtic traditions that the Catholic church back in the day absorbed into their own holiday (like they did with Christmas and the ancient midwinter feast and a whole bunch of other holidays).

The point of All Saint's Day from a purely Catholic perspective is to have day where all the saints that do not already have a day of their own (every day of the year has a saint associated with it) can be venerated properly. The paying respect to the dead thing is a later addition, which actually in Scandinavia is a fairly recent tradition with its roots in the reformation (Lutherans don't venerate saints, so they made it into "All Souls' Day" instead).

And now you know.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the Catholic church also has an All Saint's Day just to make it even more confusing.

[Sieg Reyu]

The only, best, and most important way to celebrate Halloween is with a new Homestarrunner Halloween video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q610U9W6sBQ

Or two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_-SgC_IyCo

EVERYBODY!!! EVERYBODY!!!