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 Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:12 pm
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Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 9:18 pm
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Violet Song jat Shariff Crew
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 3:18 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 5:28 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:38 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:50 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:52 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:10 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:33 am
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Eeee, I'm already planning for Halloween as well. Terence and I were just talking about it last night.
Every year I have a party (used to be really big, but now it's laid-back and small), usually with a hearse or two parked in the yard, and decorations galore. I generally make lots of food. In the past we would go reverse-trick-or-treating (handing out candy) but frankly, since 2001, there aren't many trick-or-treaters around here, compared to before, and everyone's more suspicious and wary. :/
I also dress up Terence and send him to work that way (he works for HP). I think the best costume was when he was a white and pink unicorn. Terence, Vanessa and I all had matching unicorn costumes and went as a "herd". I knitted tails and made cute little horns with flowers, and made us all sparkly.
This year I'm dressing as Katara. >_>
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:37 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:55 am
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TeaDidikai Cirrus, pics please. So, seeing a lot of folks don't really do the "Halloween" thing- why not?
I loved dressing up and going out when I was little. It was my favorite holiday.
But I hate how it's set-up pushed earlier and earlier every year - you can't get Hallowe'en stuff here much past mid-October, anymore, and the week before it's being replaced on the shelves by Xmas crap.
So, like most things, the commercial frenzy around the holidays of the end of the year just absolutely turns me off.
I have no children and/or family in the area, so there's no reason for me to be out. I used to take my cousins out when I was a teenager and they were still small, but everyone in my family has grown up now. I'm the oldest, my siblings and cousins have no children either. So there's no generation the right age.
Our neighbourhood isn't great. There are few trick or treaters here, and I feel there are too many older children who are still going out on what should be for the little ones. So I don't buy candy to hand out. My anxiety doesn't handle lots of people knocking on the door all night well, either.
Some of my husband's friends have a party the weekend before Hallowe'en, but I have dressed up only twice in the last 8 years...and only then last minute. It's never something I plan for. My anxiety also takes care of my desire to go to parties, fairly well. Although last year I ended up doing too many Jell-O shots and was apparently amusing. I can't help it - I adore Jell-O, even though I don't drink.
My coven's Samhain ritual is usually close by (like the weekend after), so I'm busy enough with that. My personal preference is to mark Samhain astrologically, so even if I was not with my coven, I would not be celebrating on the 31st. But, since I am generally home most of the time, I take the week before the coven weekend to do my personal honour to my ancestors, as our coven's open ritual is not geared to that sort of thing. |
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:57 am
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:39 pm
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TeaDidikai MoonJeli>> Which outfit? Fire Nation? Original? Earth Kingdom? Morgandria, you raise an interesting point. The connection with "Samhain" to Halloween- how many folks link those two together? One thing I have personally noticed here in the states is a reclaiming of Halloween for Adults. Special stores now sell Halloween goodies all year round and where in the mid '90's you couldn't find adult costume sizes to save your soul, now there is almost a better selection of them than there is of kid costumes in some places. ninja
Hallowe'en is hugely driven by the adult market now - the nostalgia of people my age and older for the holiday seems to be the biggest reason for the commerce. I've seen a lot of parents get way more excited by it, than their children do.
I see a lot more adult parties, too. There are less and less kids on the streets, every year. There are any number of churches in our area who have 'harvest parties', so we have lots of people who for religious reasons don't celebrate it - more than I remember as a kid.
When I was a kid, it was OMG free candy, and being out with your friends, and having fun. It was genuinely a treat - I was not raised with junkfood and soda and other snacks on a regular basis. I was also a country kid, too, so it wasn't like I could just walk to any old convenience store and buy junk all the time. If my parents didn't buy it, I didn't get it. Hallowe'en was your own private stash - it was awesome. And if you only went to farms, they'd give you half the candy bowl - you might be the only kids they say that night.
Now, it's like either the kids don't care because they've already got all of those things on a regular basis. Many are given enough money to buy what they want whenever, so why have fun and exercise, or go outside?
Or you have those micro-managing parents who couldn't imagine letting their child do anything fun that wasn't some sort of 'play-date'...or occasionally eat non-organic treats. Or they strip all the fake scary stuff out and it's all cutesy wee-a-boo nonsense.
When I was still a teenager, and seeking a path, Samhain and Hallowe'en seemed the same to me. Now, much farther along that seeking, I feel them completely different from one another - but that's not to say that's how it started. Hallowe'en has been secularized - it's fun and games and silliness, with no attachment to past traditions anymore.
So, in my mind, they're different. I don't celebrate Hallowe'en any more than I do all the other vapid commercial holidays on the calendar. I do celebrate Samhain. Samhain for me is a feast, a time to honour our Beloved Dead, to mark the passing of the light half of the Year and the third harvest reaped - blood and bone sacrificed to survive the winter.
Maybe at some point in time again, if people draw closer to their cultural and agricultural roots, the old traditions of Samhain that became Hallowe'en, might merge paths again. But as people are increasingly urbanized, I am not sure it'll be any time soon. |
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:47 pm
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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:10 pm
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