Your opinion of Halloween

[BurtWorm]

Poll question: Your opinion of Halloween

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. I love Halloween, though Christmas is my all-time favorite holiday.

I get literally hundreds of kids trick or treating. My next-door neighbors keep count, I could not possibly keep up. Love to see the kids and give them stuff that their parents will hate them to have, LOL.

On edit: I have a good friend whose birthday is that day as well. It fits. LOL.

[Maple]

2. Why are adults

even talking about Halloween??

Kids go out for candy.

I doubt any of you are kids anymore!

[PittPoliSci]

3. Cause Halloween PWNS!!!!!

i love it, i'm 19! I may not be a real adult yet, cause I still feel like a kid. But just seeing all the little ones out in the costumes and dressing up myself and listening to Helloween and Iron Maiden is FUN!!!!!!!

[Friar]

13. It PWNS? I think it 0wnz0rz

hehe

I was a vampire for a decade. I stole my choir robe from my High School and had a GF turn it into a vampire cape a few years later. I regret the theft but I was just a kid. I loved Halloween because of that cape. It had a red inner lining. :)

[Blue_Chill]

31. Halloween is the Ub3r l33t holiday

It r0x0rz my b0x0rz.

:D

Sorry couldn't help myself, carry on.

[Lady Freedom]

8. Are you kidding?

Around here kids and adults go crazy!!!

[WoodrowFan]

17. Because it's fun

My wife and I decorate our house on the outside, plug in the spooky sounds tape, put on costumes and hand out candy to the neighborhhood kids! If it's on a weekend we have (adult) friends over to watch old classic B&W horror flicks!

[rene moon]

33. so what?

Why is Halloween always labeled as a "kids holiday"? It's mine too dammit!

[SOteric]

4. I love getting an opportunity

to dress up in costumes and explore the morbid a little.

[Lady Freedom]

5. I pick it because you don't have it as #2 fav.

It is a dead tie with New Years! My #1 is Easter!


Happy Halloween!

[BurtWorm]

6. I added two options.

For people who like (but don't worship) and don't like (but don't loathe) Halloween.

[Another Bill C.]

7. When I was 12,

I went on my last "trick or treat" run. I had grown a lot that year and my voice had changed. I was with a couple of my friends who were a year or two younger. A man came to the door at one house and said, "I see you brought your dad with you." I went home after that and let my friends go on by themselves. Childhood seemed over.

[Hogarth]

9. Halloween was fun when I was a kid.

We all ventured off on our own with our bags, then came home candy-rich. (Small town memories of a budding codger)

Halloween has lost its edge, in my opinion, ever since parents became afraid of it, mandating in most municipalities that "trick or treating" has to take place during daylight hours.

Catholic Mass lost its edge in much the same way when the mystery of the service was lost as Latin fell by the wayside and guitars were carried into the sanctuary.

Give me back the Latin and the mysterious ritual. Let the kids enjoy mystery as well. Halloween has turned into a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. (And I apologize to Woody Allen for using his words in this context)

Somebody, somewhere, at some time stuck a razor blade into a piece of Halloween fruit, and all of a sudden society had to turn on the flourescent lights.

Oh hell; I'm ranting. I guess I just miss the good old days when we all went to the high school to endure that rite of passage that involved sitting in the dark on that night, trying to guess by touch what had just been passed around the room. Grapes turned into eyeballs and spaghetti was guts of some sort.

Yep; when I was a kid, Halloween was fun. Now it's just a fool's holiday for parents who want to guard their kids as they go out to beg and endure the cold October rain.

[Friar]

14. spaghetti worms

*sigh*

[Robb]

18. Actually, as it turns out...

...There has never been a reported case of a razor blade stuck into a piece of Halloween fruit. Read a piece awhile back where the writer visited big and small town police departments, called, wrote, faxed. Never reported.

I miss the good old days too, although in my little town you still have kids roaming at night getting into benign mischief, and enough trick or treating to make them all sick the next morning!

...Although sometimes it gets so cold. I remember last year, all the parents drove their kids from house to house, while the kiddies ran to the doors, "T-t-t-rick or t-t-t-reat!!!" and ran back to the cars to warm back up.

I'm not a parent, but were it me, I'd have told my kids, "Nope, not a fairy this year. This year, you're an Eskimo!!" :)

[CBHagman]

27. Here's what Snopes has to say about tampering with treats

I too had recalled that the razor blade in apple scenario had been debunked (though not enough to make police departments stop offering to x-ray the contents of your trick-or-treat bag), but then I read this entry. See what you think.

www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.htm

Frankly, I always loved Halloween as a child and still love it as an adult, though, to my sorrow, I've found kids don't trick or treat everywhere.

As kids, we used to cover a good portion of the town in a single afternoon or evening (yes, we did do daylight trick or treating, at least on the East Coast). My mother used to make the most wonderful costumes for us. Best of all, I knew I wasn't going to school the next day, because it was All Saints' Day and we had a day off from school. My cousin, whose mother taught public school, would come over and stay at our house for the day, so that was an added treat.

Now I usually don't partake in the festivities but do enjoy the sight of people riding the Metro in full regalia. I'll read Robert Burns poetry (Halloween) and think about the Celtic signficance of it all. Once I even went to Salem, MA, for Halloween week, just to see what they did to celebrate.

I've heard that the holiday has actually caught on in France, though I can't recall the reasons for it. At any rate, I agree with those who say it's a day to let our everyday selves go and explore the mysterious and/or dark aspects of our lives. Everyone needs a safety valve.

[FloridaJudy]

10. Holloween's My Favorite Holiday!

You don't have to go to church.

You don't have to buy presents for relatives you despise.

You don't have to cook an enormous meal for in-laws who jump on uou every chance they get to put down: call this a turkey? It's dry and undercooked..

You get to dress as up as the Fantasy of your Choice and go knocking on your neighbor's doors asking for candy!

What could be better!

[Friar]

15. your family sounds bitter

We all get along in my family. And it's a pretty big one.

[AquariDem]

11. Unless you're a party animal, with friends,

it's no fun as an adult. Except you do get to give out trick-or-treat candy, which I like.

[Piperay]

12. I LOVE Halloween...

it's not so overdone the way Christmas is, you don't have to spend all that money and since Autumn is my favorite season Halloween is my VERY favorite holiday. I also like it because fundies hate it, it's not tied to Christianity and is the one holiday that has a pagen edge to it.

[Friar]

16. "I also like it because fundies hate it"

me too. LOL.

[scarlet_owl]

19. Any candy-centered holiday is super with me!

We don't get any trick or treaters, but I buy a big bag of candy anyway. It's a good excuse to gorge myself on sweets!

[Az]

20. The definition of irony

Me and my GF went trick or treating this weekend at a city wide event in Royal Oak. It was predominantly kids but there were several "kids at heart" out there with us. Everyone loved the costumes and not a negative comment about age was made except from one location. A salesperson at the local kink/fetish store called Noir Leather (where costumes seem to be a 365 day a year thing) asked if we were a little old to be trick or treating.

Just kinda blew my mind.

[supernova]

24. LOL!

The Universe does have a sense of humor.

[VermontDem2004]

21. Didn't like it after 6

I didn't like dressing up or putting on customes but I did like the candy.

[underpants]

22. Anyone over 8 is basically running a protection racquet

Funny piece in last week's TIme Magazine.

[Kolesar]

23. I can't believe adults spend time and money on costumes for parties

If I had an extra evening to make a costume, I think I would rather spackle the dining room or go to the library (or watch tv and drink beer).

edit: This year I had an excuse not to go to any party: I was in DC protesting the Conquest of Iraq!!!

[supernova]

25. Love Halloween

Love everything about it. Love the chance to collectively explore our cultural nightmares and darker selves. Love the chance to step out of who I am and be someone else for a while, even if just for the duration of a party.

It also provides a nice yearly contrast to the sometimes too sugary, too sappy, too kitchy celebrations of other holidays.

[soleft]

26. BurtWorm, are you going to the parade?

[Wickerman]

28. I knew a nun who loved it

and that changed my opinion of it. I was in the loved it as a kid, hate it as an adult camp - after talking with this nun once (no, I am not Catholic), who told me that it was her favorite holiday I reassessed it. She loved it cuz she could help the kids prepare for it for a week (just like any other holiday) and then on the day, could see the kids in costume and enjoy the day with them (unlike other holidays when the kids were not in school).

So, when I think of Halloween I think of Sister Sue and how much she loved Halloween and all its demons and ghosts and how this woman who had dedicated her life to something she believed in got a lot of happiness on that day.

[geniph]

29. It's an excuse to dress up

and I always like excuses to dress up and play "let's pretend." Halloween parties (for adults) tend to be a lot more fun than other adult parties, too.

Besides, if you hide at home with the lights off, you can keep all the chocolate for yourself! MUAHAHAHA!

[arwalden]

30. I'm A Halloween Scrooge. -- Go AWAY KIDS. No Candy For You Beggars!!

But I enjoy celebrating it with adults.

SNARF!

-- Allen

[Shanty Oilish]

32. I always get leftover candy on my birthday

The day after. Cheapskates, the lot of 'em!!!