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Do you decorate for Halloween?
miss_astrid
Posts: 1,808 Forum Member
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I realise Halloween isn't really a big thing in the UK (as big as it is in the USA anyway), but I was just wondering if any forum users decorate their place for Halloween?
I have never had the chance, but since I got my own place this year, I shall really enjoy decorating and going all out for Halloween, giving sweets to trick or treaters and whatnot. It's going to be a blast.
If you do decorate, where do you get your Halloween decor from? I have looked at the usual (Amazon, eBay, Etsy) and not really found much, and the supermarkets seem to be stocking up on Christmas stuff rather than Halloween items right now.
Halloween has always been the highlight of my year. I love it more than Christmas.
I have never had the chance, but since I got my own place this year, I shall really enjoy decorating and going all out for Halloween, giving sweets to trick or treaters and whatnot. It's going to be a blast.
If you do decorate, where do you get your Halloween decor from? I have looked at the usual (Amazon, eBay, Etsy) and not really found much, and the supermarkets seem to be stocking up on Christmas stuff rather than Halloween items right now.
Halloween has always been the highlight of my year. I love it more than Christmas.
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It's a lot of fun, especially when the girls start screaming.
Kids from streets away threatening to egg your house if you don't give them sweets or dosh!
Eww!
And another
No kids ever knock here. My own kids go a couple of miles down the road to the village with their mates and the neighbours' kids, now in their 20s, maybe were the only ones to knock when they were little. My two youngest are now at high school but still went last year.
We have a huge collection of Halloween decorations, that's been accumulated....probably too much mwah ha ha
I know loads of folk who get irritated by Halloween, but we have always had such a laugh at our parties, and it's something everyone looks forward to every year, and just a bit of fun ....:D:D
I recall, back when I was a kid, that Halloween always entailed hacking away at a pumpkin (and being forced to eat the dreadful pumpkin soup my mum insisted on making), putting spooky-looking candles in the windows, making costumes to go trick or treating and going to some kind of party that involved apple-bobbing.
These days, I hardly see anybody doing anything special for Halloween.
Seems, to me, like although the supermarkets are trying to encourage us to buy Halloween tat, we're actually less interested in it than we used to be.
Must say, I kinda like the way the yanks make an event of it.
It's something to look forward to during the winter.
Also, FWIW, I thought it was supposed to be a good thing.
I seem to recall that all the ghosts and ghoulies are supposed to come out on Midsummer's night and Halloween is when they go back to the underworld so you're celebrating seeing the last of them for another year.
You can't really have fun like that anymore there are too many killjoys around
I'm with you on that one.
In the 70's we had a halloween party every year and carved the old turnip, so yes it's not just a recent American import.
We used to make a lantern out of a big swede each when we were children, there were no pumpkins readily available in the 1970's! I once snapped a knife carving a swede. It took all day, kids these days have it so easy!
Got stuff already from Asda, and I just love the Yankee candle range.
Will be carving a pumpkin obviously, and my wife and I will be having a Halloween party, then horror films for the rest of the evening.
There are actually few references in the historical record in Britain that carving turnips or swedes was very prevalent or associated with Samhain at all. But rather it was a general, if uncommon art, found throughout Europe and not associated with any given time of the year. It wasn't as common as previously thought among historical "celt" cultures either. And no wonder, they're a bloody chore to carve.
Unlike Trick or treating which originated with guising (imported by Scots emigrants to the mining towns of the western US) the tradition of carving pumpkins in America is not believed to be related to any traditions in Britain. The practise in the US did not originate with Hallowe'en. In fact it turns out it was originally more associated with Thanksgiving and later became a symbol of Autumn in general. Hallowe'en basically co-opted it in the late 19th/early 20th century and North Americans began carving scary faces into them rather than the traditional cheery ones.