Why I love Halloween

If my door is knocked on, I only answer it if its on the 31st October, any other night they get told to come back.
On the 31st, I green up all the front windows, have a big mixing bowl full of goodies for them to grab a handful of. We do get the odd strange people calling, that I’ve never seen before but its all in good fun.
When the sprog was younger we had duck apples and pumpkin pie, halloween parties, all great fun, luckily for me, our new sprog will soon be able to enjoy it as well, its important to show her traditions that I had when I was a kid.

I am British but spent my childhood living in the states and I can’t think of a more imaginative and community based holiday. In the states, Halloween is about meeting your neighbours, being creative with costumes and just having fun getting in the spirit of the holidays. I am sorry for the man who had bleach thrown on him, that’s horrible and I hope you reported it to the police. Let’s hope it was an isolated incident and imagine not all children today act like this.

I have very fond memories of Halloween and if you have children, it’s a great way to get them involved with arts and craft activities and learning based events in your neighbourhood. Yes, there are pros and cons to Halloween, and if you are going out with your children you should be safe and of course be respectful to those who may not want to participate.

In my mind it’s a harmless holiday however I do agree with many of the complaints above. You will find rotten kids out there and if you don’t live in a neighbourhood you feel safe to participate, don’t open your door. Why not go out for the night or post a sign on your door that says ‘no more candy’ or ‘no trick-or-treaters please’. Simple as that.

I am in my late twenties now and don’t go out trick-or-treating or dress up but I don’t think we shouldn’t provide the same opportunity to the next generation. And if you can’t come to terms with this American Hallmark money-making holiday, just remember… it’s just one night.

I can completely see why some people hate halloween – there are many things these days that are genuinely scary about it. Eric’s example is a horrible and extreme example of this. I’m completely with Hannah on this that behaviour of that sort should absolutely be reported to the police.

However, I think there are situations in which Halloween can be done as a nice celebration of community, as Hannah says. But the key thing is to make sure that people in your community are prepared. When I was very young (about 6 or 7, I think) a family of Americans moved onto our road and were determined to do Halloween properly. They knocked on the doors of the houses (around half of whom had children) and concocted a plan with homes that wanted to take part. They then arranged different things with those houses (e.g. my mum dressed up as a witch and had a cauldron full of shredded newspaper, with a ‘lucky dip’ of sweets, someone else made hot chocolate for the end of the trick or treating).

It was a really nice event – everyone who wanted to join in could, and we made sure not to knock on the houses who had asked us not to. It was a really fun evening, with about 10 houses agreeing to take part – all of them made an effort (as did we children!) and it was a lovely, fun way to meet our neighbours and celebrate a bit of a silly holiday.

I’d be all in favour of joining in if families along my street wanted to do this, and I’d happily contribute a few sweets (or perhaps some cupcakes – I love making cupcakes!) to children who came to the door. But sadly I suspect that if I do get any callers they’re far more likely to be teenagers in last-minute masks, in which case they’ll get a ‘sorry’ and a closed door from me.