Mourning Halloween

[dragonheart]

It’s that time of year when everyone gets out their Halloween decorations, the kids start scrambling for their trick or treat costumes, and bags and bags of candy fill the aisles of the local stores.

It is also the time when I begin to mourn the death of Halloween…

When I was a kid, Halloween ranked right up there with Christmas, Easter and birthdays on the anticipation scale.  It was a big deal in the little town I grew up in.  In school, we spent class time making paper jack o’ lanterns, decorating trick or treat bags (remember those brown paper grocery bags?) and spent our lunch periods talking about our costumes and our “candy routes”.

Of course, the highlight of the holiday was visiting the haunted house that was sponsored every year by the city.  It was full of hokey, scary stuff – you know vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, witches – none of that gore fest / slasher sickness that passes for haunted houses today. 

And TV? Oh, my gosh – it was a scare fest!  There was a different “monster” movie on every night in the week leading up to Halloween – movies featuring vampires (the scary kind, not the sparkly kind), werewolves (again the scary kind, not the hot sexy kind), Frankenstein, gargoyles, etc.  It was the good kind of scared because you knew it was just pretend and those things really didn’t exist in the real world.  The scary movies touted about today (serial killers, torture flicks) – well, those are too scary for me – because stuff like that is REAL and it is not the least bit entertaining.  If I want to be scared like that, all I have to do is watch the evening news.

When my son was little, we  tried to recreate the Halloween of our childhood – it didn’t work, the world has changed too much, and so has the perception of Halloween, so we stopped celebrating it years ago.

Somewhere along the line, the spirit of Halloween was lost, and that makes me really sad for today’s kids.

Comments

[whiteink]

What really gets me ... besides the gore factor is the naked factor. When I was a kid, costumes COVERED us up. People didn't dress their 5 year old up like little playboy bunnies.

I'm always very careful when I decorate either my house, or the office for Halloween. We use a lot of spiders and bats and stuff and nothing bloody. And it always turns out creepier then the blood would.

This year at work I'm doing a "spiders in the pumpkin patch" theme, and I plan to win the decorating contest (again) with the theme.

[dragonheart]

yes! yes! yes! big ole' hairy spiders and bats in a pumpkin patch - THAT is Halloween. I am not sure when (or why) Halloween became such a gore fest. That is not scary, its blech!

(I would love to see pics of your winning decorations!)

and I agree about the costumes - wouldn't surprise me a bit that people dress up their almost toddlers as play boy bunnies in this day of "Honey Boo Boo". (my asst told me about Honey Boo Boo earlier this week, I thought she was pulling my leg until I saw it on Youtube) *shrugs* people love a train wreck.

[merzibelle]

I never really celebrated Halloween because to me, starting around the time I was thirteen and started to question things a lot, it was Samhain and a religious festival of sorts. I usually spend the day contemplating the previous year and planning ahead for the new one. Though I admit I enjoy all the Halloween candy.

As to the when... the mid to late seventies but definitely by the early eighties. You can point to three things as the root cause of the change - when serial killers were no longer something to be hated but glorified; reality television; and MTV. Music videos led to teens and preteens wanting to dress like Madonna, who highly sexualized her outfits and videos even for the most 'innocent' of songs, people thought it was 'cute' and it ballooned from there. Now that the so-called genie is out of the bottle, there's no stuffing it back in.

[whiteink]

One of the women in my bible study offered to make "honey boo boo sketti" for our Italian night snacks next week and she ended up getting (jokingly) blacklisted from cooking for the suggestion. Apparently the sauce made is of microwaved Country Crock and ketchup.

[proseac]

Growing up in Ottawa, where there was a 50/50 chance that it would be snowing on Halloween, there was never any possibility of us baring skin. In fact, most of us had our snow-suits on underneath our costumes, to keep warm!

I hate blood & gore with a passion, and I prefer to focus on the "harvest" theme when decorating at this time of year.

[proseac]

I can remember making a spider in grade school at Halloween, out of a ball of yarn, pipe cleaners and a styrofoam ball. A pair of googly eyes glued on with Elmer's glue finished it off. Fun stuff!

[proseac]

I think you've hit the nail on the head as to why I detest Halloween nowadays. The other thing that really drives me nuts is that it's become all about how much candy/junk the kids can collect.

When I was a kid, we'd collect for Unicef. That was INSTEAD of asking for candy, and it was a sacrifice that we made. (Of course, Mum & Dad would always buy us a treat or two to compensate, but that wasn't assumed). Everyone had a big bowl of pennies in the front hallway along with the candy, and if you were a Unicef kid, they'd throw a few in your little box. Then you took the box to school the next day and they counted it up, and there were prizes for the top collectors.

I think that sent a far better message. Nowadays I see "kids" (and I use the term loosely - some of them are in their mid-teens, you'd think they'd be embarrassed to be begging for candy!) with pillow cases going around vying with each other to get the most. That's not what the spirit of Halloween is supposed to be about. They don't even know what "Trick or Treat" really means, and if you ever said "Trick", they'd just stare at you like an idiot and hold out their pillow case at you anyway.

Usually I just keep my porch light turned off, and stay hunkered down in the basement until it's over. Bah, humbug.

[ashley-pitt.livejournal.com]

I still love Halloween. I dress up, decorate the yard, and scare the kids into saying "happy Halloween" and "thank you"

[dragonheart]

That is great! You look awesome! (and I love that you picked a classic monster)

I would love to be able to do that, that would be so much fun.

Around here - the kids don't much even trick or treat door to door anymore. All the trick or treating is done at designated areas like churches, schools, shopping centers, etc. Granted, I live in a rural area and the houses aren't real close together - when my son was little, we took him trick or treating on the 4 wheeler.

I miss Halloween *sighs*

[klingonlady]

I guess we are still classic Halloween around here. There are haunted houses, a corn maze, pumpkin patches.. Kids door to dooring it here... I guess the only thing that is different than when I did it all as a kid is some of the Halloween costumes. My kids have never been anything bloody or overly sexual. We've had some transformers and video game guys and last year I made Belle FINALLY dress up as something that was NOT a princess. She was a witch.

This year she says she wants to be something really scary like a zombie or mummy or vampire.. All still seem like classic type monster stuff coming from her. Thank goodness!

[alidiabin]

Haloween never really was that big wherever I have lived. In most cases the local churches would plan some 'airy fairy' alternative like a 'light party', and the big kids get drunk.

One thing really scares me about this new halloween it's the girls costumes, which are barely there, while guys don't have this problem.

This year Haloween falls on the day of my last exam. So me and Alicia will probably get drunk, and lament about our bad answering of questions, that shall be the extent of my celebrations.

[alidiabin]

I like the idea of collecting for Unicef, very good idea. People should bring that back.

Also, most kids don't see sweets as a treat anymore, they get candies much too often.

[unega-waya.livejournal.com]

Ann will dress for the kids. That way she looks the part when she gives out the good stuff. As for me, I love Halloween. You see that night in 1969 I met a very wonderful woman and now 42 years later, she is still the same wonderful woman I first met all those years ago. I may not dress the part but BOY do I love Halloween Night...

[nokxioquinn.livejournal.com]

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