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

[scottishlass.livejournal.com]

It IS strange ... about ten years ago no one over here in Germany had ever heard of Halloween. We do have All Hallow's Eve and ALl Hallows over here, but these are more in the sense of the original Celtic festival, where you stay at home, celebrate the last light before the winter and remember your loved dead ones. We are also celebrating St. Martin's Day around the 7th to 9th of November where little children walk around town singing with self-made lanterns and lampoons and go from house to house for 'Krippschen' which is a very old non-translatable word for singing and getting a sweet treat (in form of sweets and apples/oranges). But in the big cities now there are more and more Halloween parties with kids trick and treating (and older ppl not understanding what the heck is going on).
I really don't like Halloween in the US sense. It is too commercial and too ... well ... American. I rather prefer the original Samhain which is the beginning of the Celtic New Year.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

I think you said it in the nutshell - it seems that the local traditions are getting lost and the old traditions of Samhain are getting lost too, and all in favour of the USA Halloween.