Halloween Hell really sums up my personal feelings on the whole event, now before anyone jumps on their soap box at me being on mine, I would like to clarify that I have no issue with how others choose to celebrate it or not as the case maybe, unless it effects others.
I dislike the knocking on doors of strangers after dark
I dislike the expectations from some to hand over sweets
I dislike the whole scary/freaky aspect
I dislike the intense commercialism
I do like is the fact some people use it as a method to meet and spend time with family and friends.
What I hate most of all is that I respect others choice to partake yet when my choice is mentioned some people have been known to tut!
Surly regardless of religion, creed or colour or personal thought we all should be allowed without malice to do Halloween or not do Halloween in the way that we wish too? …
Please respect others this Halloween and please don’t presume that they want to take part too, They maybe feeling guilty that they cant afford to feed their own family that week never mind buy sweets to give away, maybe they have babies or small children sleeping, maybe they are older and are scared to open the door.
However you wish to celebrate, be safe and have a lovely time…..
All very soapbox like I’m afraid jaime, and that’s with saying u weren’t planning to step on one. I surmise the tut tutting person in ur midst has annoyed you?! It is all fun for kids. Inexpensive compared to perhaps paying and visiting somewhere this half term on a day out too. Esme and fia will delight in some arts and crafts with their friends, before eating a tea provided by all the mums that are coming to see us. By sharing costs it is doable. But perhaps that’s where I’m so very lucky. The long lane we live on is such a community that everyone joins in. The homes that have a pumpkin lit are the ones we can visit. I agree about knocking on doors of strangers. That wld be wrong. We are done by 6pm. The fun factor is huge. I guess if it is shared and monitored by parents, where’s the harm. Sorry Jaime but I’m tempted here to say BAH humbug!
#anightofhope
Emma, I totally agree is can be cheaper to partake in it and i did agree that i liked the fact that some use it for time together. (thats always a bonus)
I think your super lucky to live in a community that all partakes and what a fantastic idea that the homes with pumpkins are the ones you visit.
I do strongly believe its a matter of personal choice if people want to take part in Halloween. we would much rather take part in something else. xx
Sorry Jaime on rereading that it appears I confused the soapbox situation. However, it wld also appear I totally got on mine! Have now woken up properly and wanted to add to my comment of earlier… You have a lovely day/eve whatever u and yours do. Xx
no worries at all Emma, i totally respect however anyone does Halloween as long as people respect those that dont want to …. your community i have to say sounds so lovely that you all come together .. that for me is a fantastic positive for Halloween xx
I quite agree about the knocking on strangers doors. When I was little we would be taken around family and friends houses, who would be expecting us. I don’t like answering the door on halloween to unchaperoned groups of children I don’t know.
I think thats so lovely that you do Halloween but and got to go trick or treating to those that knew you were coming thats fantastic. xx
Totally respect your views! I quite like it, but there’s no bad stuff round here. I do dislike the way it gets more and more commercial every year though.
awww thanks Sarah, round here and my previous house it was really bad for random kids and teenagers knocking even as late as 10.30pm! xx
I had similar feelings last year when Emma was too small to join in. This year we’re seeing friends over pizza and then the girls(and hubby) will go trick or treat for half an hour. But what I hate myself is the celebration of death, in all its gory forms, instead of life. It freaks me out, seeing kids painted as dead people or dressed as maniacal doctors. Why, oh why? Pumpkins and fairies seem a good choice to me and as far as I’d go. So you have my sympathy.xx
i totally agree on the death part, i choose happy positive things and the thought of dressing up my children as a dead person is not appealing in the slightest lol
Have a lovely time with your friends x
I think you’ve worded this perfectly. I’ve never been a huge fan and also dislike the knocking on the doors and actually being quite freaked out at not having a clue who is behind the freaking masks! – I do have a slight panic over masks in general; clowns, people in Disney costumes etc, I like to see your eyes!! – Anyhow, E is going to a party this year that involves going out trick or treating with her friends and grown ups. I just hope they go to houses that the grown ups know! One thing I have really enjoyed is the whole pumpkin aspect; carving, baking, pureeing, roasting etc, and will be annoyed when pumpkins just disappear from the supermarkets post Oct 31. I think we should have an Autumn Fest that spans the Halloween week to make less about that and more about enjoying the season. I’ll shush now x
Totally totally agree, I think that spending the time with the kids doing crafts and together time is what its all about for me.
Hope E has a lovely time xx
Totally agree with you Jaime on respecting who does and doesn’t like to partake in Halloween.
I personally love Halloween because of all the fond family memories I have, and I’m not talking knocking on doors and buying expensive costumes, I’m talking a witches outfit made out of bin bags (do you know the smell of bin bags still makes me think of Halloween, ah the powers of the senses!), making my own broom stick from twigs from the park, ducking for apples, carving a turnip (no way you’d get your hands on a pumpkin back then!) and my Mum decorating the house with homemade spooky codwebs and spiders. That’s the type of Halloweens I want my son, Caleb to experience when he’s a little older.
Claire this is fantastic, what amazing family memories!! i love it! (i love the sense of smell that will bring back the memories)
This to me sounds like a fantastic Halloween xx
I don’t do Halloween either, the closest I’ve got is dressing little man up and taking him to see his godmother next door! My friend wants me to go to a scary event this year, I’ll see how it goes!
aww honey, i feel your pain!! if you do decide to go i do hope you have a great time. If you dont feel free to tweet me i will be home in the warm with my feet up and a drink 🙂
Hi Jamie, Knowing what a usually upbeat person you are I’m just sorry you’ve not had good Halloween experiences. I LOVE it, have good memories as a child and great memories as an adult living in San Francisco where it is a great big festival. With my children we do lots of crafts, games like apple bobbing and carve our pumpkin. The biggest one still on the allotment this year.
I have to say, I never do the knocking on doors thing tho. My mother called it ‘begging’ and tu tutted terribly, so it’s obviously rubbed off. Also I opened the door a couple of years ago to a witch that made poor little 4 year old Una scream with fear and she’s never forgotten it.
It’s certainly worth people being mindful of whose door they are knocking on and if they don’t want to participate to let them be.
aww thank you honey, it does take a lot for me to to publicly be very negative about something.
I love the fact for some like yourself that the time is about sending it with friends and family making and doing, i think thats wonderful.
Oh my goodness no wonder Una screamed facing that at the door! i would of done too, i dont like answering the door for just that reason! xx
Have a great time honey xx
I didn’t really do halloween while we were in England and I didn’t let the boys go trick or treating either for many of the reasons you said, it felt like holding people to ransom. it is completely different here in Canada though, families walk around together, people decorate their houses and it has a real fun, community feel to it.
I think here in the UK SOME people abuse it and its not about family time.
have a fab time honey x
🙂 I’ve just written a similar post on my food blog to be published later this week on why I don’t like Halloween and why TC won’t be joining in. But I don’t really care what anyone else is doing, if they like it, it’s fine with me 🙂 I have attempted to carve a pumpkin though :)) the post is food related so seemed a waste just to cook it without carving !!
yay!! tweet me your link and i will pop over my lovely, i have felt rather lonely as most people obviously love Halloween xx
Completely agree with the strangers knocking on the door situation. Okay if you pop over to your neighbours who you know. But I wouldn’t be comfortable with my child randomly knocking on strangers’ doors. Don’t think I would want strange youngsters knocking on mine either!
totally!! i think to some it can be a very anxious time of year xx
My boys are always careful about knocking doors….especially in an older neighbourhood like ours. And where there are big dogs!
lol i am so sorry this image made me smile, just thinking about some big dogs chasing them and their treats. I do hope they have never been chased and dont this year either xx
I’m on the bench really. I don’t really like anything that Halloween stands for and I don’t like strangers knocking at the door. On the other hand I don’t want the kids to feel like they are missing out on anything so we will carve a pumpkin and give out sweets to the neighbours children should they knock on our door. My kids will not be going out ‘trickly treating’ as Boo likes to call it.
what a super cute phrase Boo has come up with. I think lot of people feel the same way in that they do something as they dont want their children to miss out, its a lot of pressure x
Like Lou, I didn’t do Halloween in the UK, and wasn’t a fan of the door knocking! Here in the US – you really can’t avoid it and I’ve gone with the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ philosophy 🙂 It really is a family event here, and all the kids in our neighbourhood go out with there families and school friends to trick or treat. The town also has an afternoon event for all the younger kids, where the local businesses get involved. It’s hard to avoid 🙂 I will however be putting a ‘gone trick or treating, please take one’ sign up again and turning all the lights off so that I don’t have to answer the door every two minutes…!
i so like yours style i could do with one of those signs so i can turn the lights off and ignore the door! x
I do agree with you Jamie. We don’t do trick or treating unless we are doing at family/friends houses and we know the people but mostly, they just have a little Halloween party for all the kids and they make them up little bags of sweets and fruit. I’m not a huge fan of Halloween either.
thats such a fab idea Laura, love that you add fruit in there too, thats ace! xx
our local paper has a poster you can put up that says ‘not welcome here’ so people know not to knock. I think if there is a lit pumpkin outside the house it’s probably fair game. I’m not ‘playing’ this year, so to stop the knocks I’ll be leaving a cheap bowl of sweets on the door step. It’s my half way house. I’m surprised you are tutted at. I would have thought many people feel the same way as you, some of it, particularly the older children can be very intimidating.
thats a really cracking idea to have something you can stick in your windows that is not offensive x
I am totally with you. I hate the knocking on doors, and commercialism of it all, though agree that it can be a time for family fun – though privately would be better all round!
i think thats a fab idea 🙂 x
Well put lovely! I’m not a fan of the door knocking either. We got loads of sweets for kids last year and not one person arrived on our doorstep! I bought more chocolate this year and we’ve eaten it all! Usually hate all this commercial crap but POD and I have been crafting and we’re having a silly dinner tonight – just for fun though. Try not to laugh at our pumpkins 🙂
i think that spending time together is what it should be about instead of filling other peoples children with sweets x
Agree with your views completely. Very glad hubby is at home with me tonight. Don’t like being at home on Halloween on my own as you never know who will knock the door.
I hope you didnt have too many knocking tonight honey x
I agree with you, everybody is entitled to their own opinion and to like something or not. xx
thanks honey xx
Sarah that sounds like such far better idea than Halloween its self!! x
I hope Halloween wasn’t too hellish for you this year. I’m on the fence about Trick or Treating, I’ve never been myself and can totally understand the negatives that you mention.
I do celebrate Halloween though, for religious reasons, and enjoy a good party and the spooky aspect to it all.
it was awful we went out to tea to stay out the way and came back to find the front of our house egged .. i really hate it! x