Stuff your pumpkins (appendix)

[caddyman]

I seem to have stirred a small hornet’s nest by suggesting that “trick or treat” is a recent import, and people have sought to prove me wrong by saying that they did it in the 80s. Clearly I must revise my understanding of the word ‘recent’: twenty years is now time immemorial, ten years is ancient, five years is old and yesterday is history. Today is now and current events start in five minutes time.

I blame technology.

Of course people celebrated Halloween in the past. It’s just that most establishments didn’t do much to push it until recently and while the kids might have a party with their friends, or spend time at school painting witches and ghosts, it didn’t seem to go much beyond that. Trick or treat is not a synonym for Halloween.

Or it shouldn’t be.

Edited to add: Clearly it's not only the Beeb and me that thought it all picked up pace in the 80s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween#England

Comments

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I completely agree that trick or treating is not a synonym for Hallowe'en, but it seems to draw hatred for the whole festival, which I think is a shame.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

No, Bry, you are entirely correct, and everyone else is wrong. When I first came to live here, in 1990, I was surprised at what a fuss Californians made of Hallowe'en, compared with the British. When I was eight, we learnt about the festival and drew pictures of witches, ghosts, etc, which the teacher displayed on the classroom wall for a few days, and in the years following, Hallowe'en would come and go unremarkably.

My Christian friends shake their heads and disparage it for being satanic, but it's a harmless event really: work colleagues dress up as Fred Flintstone, cowboys, pirates and geishas, and there is a potluck at lunch time. In the evening, we switch off our lights and don't bother answering the door.

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

Love that Wikipedia link !

As a good catholic lad (with a twisted sense of humor)I quite fancy making me some "Soul Cakes" and bring 'em into the office.

I even hunted down a recipe link http://www.catholicculture.org/liturgicalyear/recipes/view.cfm?id=1378

..but wast most disappointed when I realised that the cakes didn't actually consist of the baked and burnt souls of evil doers.....drat !

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

It probably has a lot to do with what bit of the country you grew up in and which bit your parents come from. And how bothered they were about traditions.

For example I have recently discovered that my southerner boyfriend has never heard of a whole mutitude of bonfire night traditions we had oop North (eg bonfire toffee, pie and peas, toffee apples).

[ghatanothoa.livejournal.com]

Lil onions here hi-jacking his nibbs LJ, hello! ( I think I needs a new LJ poor old Ghatanothoa never knows what I will have said 'neath his icon these days:)

Anywho;
Mi Mum allus referred to Hallow'een as 'Mischief Night' /anecdotes aplenty. So not so much of the treat more of the trick, it is grim up north after all.

I believe then that irrespective of corporate hi-jacking tis a tradition to do a wee bit more than just carve up turnips* and paint ghosties 'cos if mi Mum says it's a tradition then it prolly is quite old- she does speak a dialect of olde norse after all, prolly learnt it first hand as well.
It's the spirits you see and these days libations to them (by 'these days' I mean the last few hundred years you know all modern like:) so we give them to their living representatives instead in the hope they will not egg our windows/curse our hearths. So no, 'Trick or Treat' is not a synonym for Halloween but it is nice to see in a roundabout way our errant religiously freaky children took one of our thinly disguised pagan 'fests over the water and jazzed it up then gave it back a couple of hundred years later.

Also as a parent I really appreciate the haul of goodies the elder offspring and her father hunted and gathered last eve.
TTFN:)



*the tales I could tell you of carved up turnips

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Miss Onions, Hello!

Why you no fire up thine own LJ for the comment - not that in disguise ain't good enough, y'unnerstan.

[ghatanothoa.livejournal.com]

Well hello there! its like this see, I changed computers and put the LJ time sink down (the Galifrayans told me to stop sucking all the spare time in the 'verse up y'understand I had no choice.) And now |I can't get the fecking thing to work...or I've got the wrong password which is entirely possible. I shall endeavour to make it work or get a new net persona to hide behind forthwith.

[failing-angel.livejournal.com]

I remember Junior school in the 80s once held a Halloween 'party' thing - with apple-bobbing, face painting, and possibly some sort of costume contest (back in them days we made our own), but there was no trick or treating.

Having said that, last night talking to mum (who grew up in Fulford) - she remembers there being a night of pranks that used to occur, somewhere between 30th October and 4th November - but that was different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Night

It could well be that these things have been conflated - societal homogeny, the bane of modern life.

[ghatanothoa.livejournal.com]

I think rather than conflate these things were separated initially or were celebrated as an entity but probably on different days depending on which valley you lived in. I think probably in this case several aspects of the same event/ritual/festival were distilled and now are drawing together again.
Do people really credit wikipedia with accuracy these days btw? I'm an anachronistic old hag and wee bit behind the times.

[ghatanothoa.livejournal.com]

oh the above isn't my squared jawed hunk of a hubby its me again...I'm going to mail lj see if I can get my password to work.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia isn't bad overall, provided there are links and stuff in the references.

I know one or twop people try to sabotage it for a giggle, but I think far more try to keep it accurate. It's a good starting point; I wouldn't necessarily rely on it for something important.

Only me again

[ghatanothoa.livejournal.com]

Thank you professor, I'm lovin that icon.
And I am in the process of recreating a journal under the new improved name of littleonionz-because littleonions is in use...aparently *head wall repeat ad inf*