h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It stems, I believe from wassailing, although that's much nicer. I should go look it up...

this is a trick or treat question: am I right in thinking that the trick or treat is to come from the householder, and not that if the kids don't get a treat they play a trick? That's how I always understood it.

Marks and Sparks are doing a nice line in ready carved pumpkins at the moment... Halloween a commercial activity? surely not

Since the term trick or treator refers to the kids dressed in costume, I would say that they are the ones to choose trick or treat.

That's how I always understood it.

Sorry the Americans are repressing you with this terrible holiday.

There are some of US who don't like it.

I guess write to Parliment if you really can't tolerate one night of giving candy to people in costume.

And yes, it's commercialized. Is there ANY holiday that isn't at least a tad commercialized!???

Like parliament can do anything about it!

And no, there aren't any holidays that aren't commercialised - except maybe the ones the big media people haven't heard of yet, quite simply because hardly anyone celebrates them. It's sickening really.

So then, let's boycott all holidays. YAY!!!

You give things to people you don't like very much on Christmas, don't you!??? Kinda like Halloween, only the witches and pirates are "real" and you spend much more time with each other.

If it were just local cute kids in costume that would ok-ish, but more often than not it is youths that have acquired a cheap mask (ie minimal effort) and essentially come round demanding money with menaces.

Sorry to be raining on your parade Dragonfly, but in very recent memory here in the uk halloween has gone from a slightly charming but not very important chance for a few kids to dress up to a slightly unpleasant, overly-commercialised reason for begging

Agreed there, Kelli.

We very rarely get Trick or Treaters, but we've had fireworks thrown at the house (without anyone knocking on the door first!), eggs thrown at the house, and on one occasion my mother opened the door and got splatted with water pistols - but that was a bunch of loser jerks from school who were expecting either me or my sister to open the door and thought they were being funny.

I do have a very vague memory of looking out of my bedroom window one Hallowe'en night when I was about ten or eleven, and seeing a small group of children in a wide variety of costumes being ushered about by an obliging Mum. That was quite sweet.

But given that the people who knock on our doors these days are rarely younger than their early teens, and not particularly interested in smarties (for 'Trick or Treat', read 'Money or Vandalism'). I suppose it's probably rather dented the UK's perception of Hallowe'en.

At least that's our own experience. I should add that we live in one of the more 'genteel' areas of the City as well!

Like someone said earlier, Christmas Carols are just as terrifying - only here we get just one mumbled chorus of 'We wish you a merry Christmas'. They don't go on to ask for figgy pudding because the first verse is all they know. As for 'We Three Kings' or 'O Come all Ye Faithful' - they haven't heard of those at all. We consider it variety if they can sing one verse of 'Away in a Manger'.

Sorry - rant ends.

<>

Err... no, actually. Maybe that's one of the advantages of being a student.

As one of my housemates pointed out the other day, we're unlikely to get many trick or treaters where I live in Nottingham as we're kind of bang in the middle of the most studenty areas imaginable. Or at least, we won't get any cute kids in home-made costumes... this being Nottingham, there's no telling what we'll get instead.

But do you not think that it's pretty stupid to play tricks on people who are not even in the house ? Last year I was not at home but they were obviously so hell bent on playing tricks when they didn't get a treat that they decided to cover my front door with fake snow and 'silly straw'. SO annoying as the whole of the next day my door was plastered for the world to see and I had no idea until I returned from my trip. What if I'd been on holiday for a week or more ? Kids should be supervised on these things and as I said in the opening entry - not be wandering in and out of pubs for money over a week in advance.

I wander how effective it would be if there was a curfew for unaccompanied children/teenagers (might also help get control of idiots playing with fireworks).

I doubt you would get so many 14 yr olds asking for money if they had to take their mum with them.

Call me old fashioned but, I wonder what sort of mum (and/or dad) lets their children out at night on their own to knock on strangers doors.

When I was 14 I had to be home by 8 o'clock or, if I was out later, would have to be accompanied home by an adult. Not through fear - but through responsibility.

It makes me sick when the same "doting" parents, that go on about the Soham girls and what a tragedy it was, have absolutely no idea where their kids are at 9 or 10 at night.

Re: idiots with fireworks

No, the idiots round here are students with no better way of spending their parents' money than letting off bangy things in the middle of the day (in a force 8 gale, too, which makes for an interesting unpredictability re. where the things may end up. Not going in their own back door, unfortunately)

A local chip-shop owner is frightened for his life after kid threw fireworks through his shop doorway. Fortunately there were no customers in there at the time, and nobody got hurt. But the idiot kids didn't realise that fireworks and hot oil are a life-threatening combination (the fireworks were only 'bangers', not rockets, which would have been lethal). Unfortunately, the shop is so small that the chippie has to leave the door open to allow the customers to queue inside.

Mmm... curfew... several places in America have such things.

Sadly there are too many parents who don't have a clue & don't care what their kids (even quite young ones)are up to during the day, let alone the evening.
And of course as it is dark, the trick or treating can start as early as 5 o'clock.
After one bad year, a parish councillor casually asked the suspects would they look out for any troublemakers & help make sure all was orderly. Of course they might have decided not to do anything anyway, but no eggs or fireworks incidents occurred.
I'd be sad to feel a curfew was the only way to solve the problem.

Hmmmmm.... Parents aren't very good monitors of anyone. Some parents lose their three year old in wal*Mart. Ummm... hello!?? Don't you care!??? Quite sad.

I'm suddenly happier I live in the U.S..... Maybe I'll live here for the football season(YANKEE Football-- Mid August- Mid/Late January). Herrrmm...

ok...

personally, sticking up for 'youngsters of today' (particularly since they have 'no respect for anyone', as we are continually told), the ones we get are pretty feeble but non-threatening. If they arrive early we say 'Not til Thursday' and they mooch away. If they are just wearing their hoods up and have torches, we ridicule their 'efforts' but give them a biscuit anyway. Although once my dad terrified some poor kiddies by leaping through the doorway yelling 'I'm all for treats!'
perhaps ignorance is better.
(strange I have just arrived from a thread discussing the 'improved modern version' of Wicca) does it matter how 'originally' we celebrate it? not all of us have the distinction of being Celtic (and to be honest most people who live in a modern Celtic area don't necessarily qualify) and we all go on what's been done before. Besides most of those rituals can be found in some form or other, Celtic or not, and independent of the area. If you went further back you could say that Germanic traditions, as imported, are the real ones since that's where the Celts were busy before they got here... but what is the point? (I am Pagan but not Wiccan btw and am planning a Samhain nosh-up... <scrump&gt I might go a-soul caking, come to think of it, anyone else? As for dressing up and pumpkin lanterns, Hinton St. George (village, not luvvie) has a lantern procession which demands light with light-hearted menaces. (So I read it, anyway.) Pumpkins probably suffice better than native vegetables. There is a strong tradition of demanding goods, usually edible, on pain of mild disturbance (door-rottling, mainly) although not called Trick-or-Treat there's not much difference. Probably not widely practiced in urban areas tho so maybe we are reviving our own olde practices.
Christianised in some form, as All Hallows/Saints (like Presidents' Day? honouring even the pointless ones.) when the dead are allowed back for the night. (Good and bad, it seems.) Day of the Dead, like (which would be a far more healthy way to do it.) The ridiculous individuals who write en masse to Local Papers to complain about 'Satanic' celebrations best go back and check up on their own religion.
apol.s for length.

I love your last statement. In my Bible as Lit class my professor spoke about how non-monotheistic the Christian faiths are...

I was happy.

Because I was torn down shortly after 9/11(If you don't know, yes, I am a Yank in Colorado--middle of the U.S., kinda) when a co-worker in the lounge got very caught up in the famously ugly picture of "the Devil" in the smoke from the WTC.

"There's no Devil," I said.

And then I was told to read the Bible.

Does the Bible actually say there's a Devil? I wouldn't know, I've never read it, but some part of the back of my mind is suggesting that it doesn't for some reason.

I may of course be utterly wrong. Nothing new there!