Where I don't really understand Halloween

[alexandral]

I didn't want to spoil anyone's fun yesterday with grumpy entries, but I do not understand Halloween. Mostly likely because I grew up in USSR where we never had this holiday. It fact, round about this time of year USSR used to have one of their biggest holidays of the year, "The October revolution day", celebrating the anniversary of the revolution in 1917. This was one of the biggest holidays, but not one of the favourite ones. Usually the fun consisted of big parades and demonstrations (in mostly freezing weather you get in Russia at this season) and lots of Lenin films shown on TV. The favourite time of the year it was not, at least not mine.
Tangentially, when the similarity between the date of "The October revolution day" and "All Hallows' Eve" was discovered in 90s, this produced much speculation and conspiracy theories about the "demonic" nature of the October Revolution of 1917. Seriously. :D

The other aspect of Halloween-underappreciation for me is the fact that I don't see why my kid or I should get dressed as a skeleton or a zombie or any other evil thing. I am quite literal and for me evil things are .. well.. evil. As I understand, in the USA people get dressed in all manner of fun costumes and this sounds like something that can potentially be fun. But here in the UK the costumes we get seem to be witch/ghoul/zombie/pumpkin. I have no desire to dress as any of those.

Also I don't think it is at all that safe for kids to be wondering dark streets alone, demanding sweets from strangers. Usually the little ones are accompanied by an adult, but I have seen several groups of 9-10-11-12 year olds wondering the streets unattended. Yes, I am paranoid, but I still don't think this is safe at all.

And the last thing, although may be this is the main thing, is that I do not like ANY of commercial holidays. I have a sneaky suspicion that they all are invented by "evil multinational corporations" that want to sell more of cheap sweets, cheap zombie masks and other stuff that we don't really need.

Just for fun: the old card with the battleship Aurora literally translates: "Glory to the Great October!"

Comments

[fauxkaren.livejournal.com]

*shrug* It's an American thing. Having spent a couple of Halloweens in the UK, I can confirm that it is not the same over there as it is here. I'm not a huge fan myself (mostly because I hate dressing up in costume), but I can see why other people like it.

Idk. It's a cultural thing here. It's not kids knocking on doors and demanding candy. If people don't want trick-or-treaters, they generally just leave the porch light off. But people LIKE giving out candy. My grandma loves seeing kids in their costumes, but she lives in a gated community where they don't really get trick-or-treaters, so she goes over to my aunts house so she can see the kids in their costumes and hand out candy. It's a lot of fun, and since it's cultural, everyone knows what's up and what to expect, you know? In my experience, most parents either walk their kids to the door or follow them at a distance (waiting at the end of the drive way) so the kids feel a bit more independent. A lot of times, if a family lives in a bad neighborhood, they're drive somewhere else to trick-or-treat, so it really is generally pretty safe as long as the kids know basic safety rules like being careful when crossing streets and not going into a strangers home.

Over here, people get dressed up as all sorts of things. My cousin was the tin man from The Wizard of Oz this year. I was a cat. People dress up as all sorts of things. In fact the majority of things people dress up as are NOT scary. A lot of them are funny and based around contemporary pop culture like Snooki from Jersey Sore or Lady Gaga.

I'm sure that the reason Halloween is so popular now has a lot to do with candy companies pushing it on us, but meh. I don't care. It's still fun.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

Yep, I think it is an American thing, and may be this is the second main reason I personally feel lukewarm to it - it is just not something that feels natural here.. somehow. It is also so close to Guy Fawkes day (which feels really British).