discouraged

Posted 11-01-2007 at 04:44 PM by supertackyman

another haloween night has come and gone.. this year i had ZERO trick or treaters. My wife and I used to really be into the spirit, put up lots of decorations and etc mid month. ever since we bought our house 4 years ago though, we have had nary a visitor on haloween. short of a blinking neon sign that says "free candy" i dont know what else to do.
I love decorating for the spookies but it just dosent seem worth the effort lately.

Posted in Uncategorized

Views 233 Comments 5

Total Comments 5

Comments

Well, STM, I've got you beat ... I had Three trick or treaters. And one of those was a "drive by" trick or treating. The turn out on our street is so bad, that the people that do give out candy will give it away by the handful!
I took my daughter (years ago) to the mall to trick or treat - how boring is that? Thousands of kids pushing and shoving and most of the stores giving hard candy stuck to some advertisement for their store.
Where I grew up, Halloween was spectacular. Kids everywhere! Everyone decorated and dressed up to give out candy. You could hardly carry your bag after a half hour. You could easily have over 300 trick or treaters.

Yeah, it's pretty disappointing.

Posted 11-01-2007 at 10:10 PM by MoodsR4Cattle MoodsR4Cattle is offline

We had a ton of kids, we live in the kind of development where there are a lot of really close houses and it's a popular place for people to drive to and walk through the whole development. We spent about 2 hours out with out kids and still had a 100 people or so after 6:00.

Our old house used to get just 5-10 kids if we were lucky enough to see any of them. It's all location I guess.

Besides, it's fun to decorate and even if you don't have kids coming by, I'm sure other people enjoy looking at the decorations. Keep your chin up.

Posted 11-01-2007 at 11:27 PM by stiney51 stiney51 is offline

As you may be aware, Halloween in the UK has never been as big a deal as it is in the States – in fact, when I was a kid (many years ago) we didn’t celebrate Halloween at all. The most you could hope for would be an old Hammer horror film on TV. Over the past twenty years or so it has grown in popularity (no doubt due to the influence of American culture), so we do now get groups of small kids going trick or treating although you still won’t see many displays of Halloween decorations unless someone’s having a party or something – certainly nothing like the impressive displays I saw when I was over there.

There are also certain groups who are actively opposed to Halloween: some church groups seem to think that these celebrations are tantamount to Satanism. I find this highly amusing and a little ironic, since in general religion in the UK has a much lower profile than it does in the USA – maybe they’re just trying to grab a bit of publicity for themselves. Certain sections of the conservative media also get very sniffy about the idea of trick or treating, too. On the one hand, they condemn it as “begging” while also pointing out the dangers of children accepting gifts from strangers. I suppose I can almost see the logic of the latter point: for 364 days of the year we tell our children “Don’t take sweets from strangers” and then on Halloween they are actively encouraged to do that very thing. Talk about mixed messages!
In reality, of course, there is very little risk as most trick-or-treating kids are accompanied by responsible adults.

I personally enjoy Halloween and attempt to enter into the spirit (pardon the pun!) of the occasion. I bought a bowlful of candy for anyone who might call but I was quite disappointed when we only got one group of 5-6 kids the whole evening.

Posted 11-02-2007 at 09:24 AM by Tamlin Tamlin is offline

	Tamiln, it's interesting that Halloween started on your side of the pond, with the Celts and their Samhain festival, and yet it's more popular over in the US. Well, you know how we like to party!
	Posted 11-02-2007 at 02:32 PM by MoodsR4Cattle

	We also like to commercialize every holiday. Nothing like a way for candy companies to pad their earnings like a holiday where you are encouraged to buy lots of candy and give it away. You have to fill the gap between candy hearts of valentines and candy canes somehow.
	Posted 11-03-2007 at 04:33 PM by stiney51