Trick or treat
Thursday, November 1st, 2012 11:10 amWell, I was quite happy to see that no trick or treaters turned up last night, but I think poor old ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ellefurtle was a tad disappointed, having bought a bucket of sweets for the occasion.
I have never understood the appeal of Halloween and am more than happy to ignore it. In years gone by, when I lived on my own I would cheerfully switch off all the lights and retire to play with the computer or listen to music in the bedroom rather than advertise my existence to the locals, who for the rest of the year would step over your corpse in the street as much as speak to you.
I think the problem is, regardless of where the tradition first popped up and disregarding the fact that card/sweet/costume suppliers have jumped on the commercial bandwagon, that in most of the UK it’s not done properly.
You see scenes from the US (particularly), where kids wander around cosy neighbourhoods in costume, collecting sweets from neighbours and having a fine old time, maybe having trivial scares along the way if the neighbours dress up too.
I am unaware of anything like that happening when I was a kid in Telford. Halloween might be mentioned at school in passing, but it was nothing special. We certainly never traipsed around the locality begging sweets. I seem to recall first becoming aware of it as a celebration of anything when it was featured in ET, so I thought it must be an American invention, but I have since been persuaded otherwise. It seems it started here, was exported, forgotten locally and then re-imported. Whatever the case, we clearly don’t do it properly, at least not anywhere I’ve ever lived.
I could cope and might even join in if it was Mums and Dads trailing around with their kids, having a bit of a lark, but generally speaking, where I have been aware of it happening at all, it generally comes close to being gangs of youths demanding money and/or candy with menaces. It was like that in Clapham, I wasn’t aware of it taking place in Kensington when I lived there for a while and it varied in Whetstone. Actually, the latter was a little closer to what I suppose it ought to be, but still low key.
Our current locale doesn’t seem to be much involved, possibly because of the ethnic mix. I can’t remember if anyone came by last year. The year before I was at an American football game at Wembley so other than the fact that Furtle carved a melon (in lieu of a pumpkin), I don’t know about that either.
Anyway, I’m glad it’s passed for another year, personally.
ellefurtle was a tad disappointed, having bought a bucket of sweets for the occasion.I have never understood the appeal of Halloween and am more than happy to ignore it. In years gone by, when I lived on my own I would cheerfully switch off all the lights and retire to play with the computer or listen to music in the bedroom rather than advertise my existence to the locals, who for the rest of the year would step over your corpse in the street as much as speak to you.
I think the problem is, regardless of where the tradition first popped up and disregarding the fact that card/sweet/costume suppliers have jumped on the commercial bandwagon, that in most of the UK it’s not done properly.
You see scenes from the US (particularly), where kids wander around cosy neighbourhoods in costume, collecting sweets from neighbours and having a fine old time, maybe having trivial scares along the way if the neighbours dress up too.
I am unaware of anything like that happening when I was a kid in Telford. Halloween might be mentioned at school in passing, but it was nothing special. We certainly never traipsed around the locality begging sweets. I seem to recall first becoming aware of it as a celebration of anything when it was featured in ET, so I thought it must be an American invention, but I have since been persuaded otherwise. It seems it started here, was exported, forgotten locally and then re-imported. Whatever the case, we clearly don’t do it properly, at least not anywhere I’ve ever lived.
I could cope and might even join in if it was Mums and Dads trailing around with their kids, having a bit of a lark, but generally speaking, where I have been aware of it happening at all, it generally comes close to being gangs of youths demanding money and/or candy with menaces. It was like that in Clapham, I wasn’t aware of it taking place in Kensington when I lived there for a while and it varied in Whetstone. Actually, the latter was a little closer to what I suppose it ought to be, but still low key.
Our current locale doesn’t seem to be much involved, possibly because of the ethnic mix. I can’t remember if anyone came by last year. The year before I was at an American football game at Wembley so other than the fact that Furtle carved a melon (in lieu of a pumpkin), I don’t know about that either.
Anyway, I’m glad it’s passed for another year, personally.