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

I've just re-read my post three and realised that it makes not a lot of sense without the fact that the roving gangs of small children demanding money with menaces were usually pushing a go cart containing a tracksuit stuffed with newspaper. This was described, optimistically, as 'a Guy'.

Trick or treat has been around in the uk for at least 25 years because I remember it from when I was a nipper. Having said that, we were not allowed to do it because mum didn't want us knocking on people's doors and begging. We did dress up though, and usd to go and visit the old folks home. This was one of the adult's ideas, not sure if it was to entertain the old folks, or to frighten them (or us kids). Seemed to work ok usually.

Since when did halloween become a holiday? And why is there so much tat in the shops for it?

Is it just gaining popularity because the time from the august bank holiday to christmas is generally a dull grind with awful weather that seems to go on for ever? If so then it is ok



k

I rememeber Penny for the Guy as a child but as for Hallowe'en we just used to look out for witches on broomsticks in the sky. Now with all the cheap plastic masks and plastic pumpkins etc, along with the horrible trick or treat (starting a week early) it's gone a bit far. I'll have a few sweets handy but that's just becuase I'm scared of what the pesky kids will do to my front door otherwise. Feel very sorry for the elderly. It's a bit like blackmail.

The 'tat' in the shops is just commercialism rearing its ugly head again. It's companies looking for another way to make money, like greetings card manufacturers coming out with cards for 'Grandparents' Day', 'Nurses' Day', etc. I don't think Halloween is necessarily more popular than it was, it's just an attempt (probably successful) to sell more stuff.

Halloween has never been a holiday in the UK, although it may be in the US. I guess the prevalence of 'trick or treating' depends on where you live. It certainly didn't go on in Coventry 25 years ago, and in 12 years of living in Redditch it has only happened once. (We told the kids to go away and they left without doing anything.) Maybe years ago it started round the US Airforce bases that we have around the country, and spread from there. Or maybe recently kids have seen it in American films and TV programmes and they're copying that.

Well we've thrown a hallowe'en and bomfire night house party for the last three years now...this years theme is a twisted circus (I've just bought the fabric to tent our hall).

To be honest it's just an excuse to get steaming drunk, have a bbq in rediculously cold weather and dress up like nutters...oh and hubby bought a smoke machine three and a half years ago and we only get to use it once a year so....

Last year we had the party in the new house, set up the usual candles lining the driveway and the pumpkins by the door...we didn't get any trick or treaters at all...I think they were scared about us taking things too seriously, shame.

Oh and at home in Liverpool everyone used to get much more excited about missy night (mischeif night) the night after hallowe'en which was basically just a case of trick or treat without the choice....everyone got tricks. Trick or treat never really took off up there - of course people tried it but most people just told them where to go.

>just re-read my post three and realised that it makes not a lot of sense......

'sfunny, being from Sunderland mesel it made perfect sense to me

(No I do not, never did and never will own or wear a shell suit)

TSF

I can tell you I'd hate to be responsible for the Halloween aisle at Wal*Mart!!! Talk about scary!!!!

I find the whole business of Halloween very irritating (as imported from America) largely because I still celebrate Samhain, and I really don't fancy the idea of being interrupted in my feasting, meditation and honouring of assorted deities by someone demanding sweets or money. If I do have to answer the door on Samahin, it's very tempting to do it with juggling staff in hand...

The kids round here have knocked on our door every Halloween and Christmas for the last 5 years and we have not responded once (we are forewarned that it's them 'cos we can hear them arguing who's turn it is to ring the bell)...and yet they still knock. Hey kids - take a hint! bah!

MaW, you said:
'I find the whole business of Halloween very irritating (as imported from America) largely because I still celebrate Samhain, and I really don't fancy the idea of being interrupted in my feasting, meditation and honouring of assorted deities by someone demanding sweets or money.'

Here in Ireland, we would consider the kids going around collecting, and building bonfires, as the true inheritors of the Samhain tradition, and the Wiccan celebration as a recent import!

The pre-christian Celts were found in Ireland from about 500 BC to about 500 AD, when they converted to Christianity. The Samhain festival has probably been assimilated into the Christian tradition as Halloween for at least as long as it was ever around as a pagan festival here.

Samhain as the first of November and Oiche Shamhna as Halloween have been perfectly normal words in Irish for hundreds of years, and the days have been celebrated as a feast without any prayers to assorted deities apart from the Christian one. So while you celebrate your new improved Wiccan version of Samhain, I will continue to give nuts and sweets to the kids who celebrate the traditional version!

Azara

Witches celebrate from sundown to sundown, so Samhain is considered to be October 31 (in the Northern Hemisphere), but the celebrations go on through November the first, although I believe that the name is related to old Scottish/Irish words for Nov 1.

I haven't heard of traditions that you speak of Azara.

For many years now we have been pestered by trick or treat callers of various ages. They seem to have the idea it's 'give us a treat or we'll play a trick on you'. I thought it was supposed to be the householder who chooses whether to give a treat (something nice)or trick (eg drop a stone in their bag).
My children never wanted to do it & we all disapprove of it. In earlier years I kept some stale sweets handy to dole out reluctantly.
The younger ones have not been such a problem, they usually dress up for it & go away without a fuss if we say nicely that we aren't playing this year. But we have had older ones, may be not even in fancy dress essentially demanding with menaces. One year we had an egg thrown at the house for refusing & other people had fireworks put through the letterbox if they didn't answer the door.
In later years I primed some mini Smartie boxes with macaroni so they think they're getting a treat but it isn't.

Mina, you said
'I haven't heard of traditions that you speak of Azara.'
You've never heard of bonfires, collecting etc. at Halloween? I thought that was what we were talking about already in this thread.

You also said 'I believe that the name is related to old Scottish/Irish words for Nov 1'. As far as I know Samhain *is* the old Scottish/Irish name, taken over lock, stock and barrel - the evolution of the pronunciation and spelling would have been completely different if it had been assimilated into English in earlier times.

There were four old pagan Celtic festivals, Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain. Once Ireland was converted to Christianity, three of them carried over as the names of months and the festivals associated with the turn of the seasons. So there are at least a thousand years of written records in Irish that use Bealtaine for May, Lughnasa for August and Samhain for November. There doesn't seem to be any traceable use of these words in English until the antiquarians of the 18th and 19th centuries started to research ancient paganism. So the use of Samhain as the name for an ordinary month, and especially for the first day of the month, has a thousand years or more of history behind it compared with perhaps 150 years for the modern wiccan usage.

In Irish-speaking areas, Halloween is Oiche Shamhna (the eve of Samhain). So all the Halloween traditions that we have been discussing here are Samhain traditions. If they went from Ireland or Scotland to the US, and then back to England, they are still in an unbroken continuous tradition. The wiccan Samhain traditions seem to be 19th or 20th century resurrections of things that had not been done for a long, long time...


Azara

Trick or treating does seem to stem from older traditions from the time which modern Witches try to draw some of their practises from, but that doesn't mean we have to like its modern form...

What ever happened to The Golden Rule?!?/ The Wiccan Rede!?? Why aren't people on both sides of the damn trick-or-treat door a little kinder!???

Come on.... go with the flow.... leave a bowl of treats outside if it's such a burden to answer your door.

And it sounds like there's a lot of whining about what the pranksters do, but not any talk at all about contacting authorities about the problem.

Face it. Maybe even try to have a little fun with it. It might not kill you after all.

And in that, where's the tolerance for those who do not wish to participate?

Like me. I shouldn't have to answer the door if I don't wish to, neither should I have to give things to people I don't want to give things to.

And what possible use can the authorities be when they're already overstretched on a normal evening?

You lot think you've got problems at Halloween. You should try being the owner of the local sweetshop.

I just treat it as part of the job; fortunately I know all the local children and I've never had any problem; mostly they just want to show off their costumes and be complimented on them; a few sweets is a bonus.

I do have sympathy with the elderly, though, particularly in less gentile locations.

Noggin

At least it only comes once a year.

Man... way to make my favorite holiday into a big let down...

Azara, I meant that I hadn't heard anything about door- to- door collecting of food as a tradition dating back past the latest commercial halloween traditions.