Samhain, All Hallows Eve, or Halloween? Which ever words you prefer, how, if at all do you celebrate this time of year? I know it’s completely different, depending on where you are in the world, but does anyone here have any thoughts or opinions on this subject?
Ever since I was a kid, I have always loved this time of year, but as I’ve gotten older, my views and opinion of this “holiday” have changed drastically. I grew up like most kids in the US by getting dressed up and going trick-or-treating, and when I was too old for that, I took my little sisters and my parents would stay home and hand out candy. When we were growing up, you usually knew which houses to go too because they usually had a jack-o-lantern on display.
I remember the first time I saw a house with 2 jack-o-lanterns out front, that blew me away, you mean you can have more than 1!
That was when I started carving as many pumpkins as I could lay my hands on and I became “mr. macabre” to my family and then future wife. When we owned our own home, I would turn the front yard into a cemetery/pumpkin patch that made our home “Halloween central” to the city we lived in and would attract hundreds of kids. At first, it was a lot of fun, but the more I did, the more like a job it became.
To make a long story short, we had to sell our home in 2015 because I was forced to retire, which means the last time I was able to “haunt” our house was in '14. I had gone from “spooking” the local kids into flat out trying to disturb everyone, including my own family the last year I was able to have my fun. I had an agreement with my family that I wouldn’t ruin x-mas for them if they left me to my own devices on Halloween night.
My opinion about all-hallows eve had begun to change as I learned more about it’s origin’s and history, and I decided that it’s not a night to make light of death, but it’s about preparing for the “dark” half of the year by honoring and remembering your ancestors who were worthy of your respect.
It’s my opinion that when someone dies and they are buried in a cemetery, that that is where they remain, they don’t leave their bodies and go to either a heaven or a hell for all of eternity, this is where their mortal remains rest. My wife and kids are all practicing christians, and have no reason to visit my mother’s grave in a local cemetery. They all believe that she is no longer there, her soul/spirit is in heaven and wouldn’t even be aware we were there, and think of it as a waste of time. This makes me angry, because I believe that you should respect and remember them even though they are gone.
My wife doesn’t understand it, but every year on OCT. 28th, I put a jack-o-lantern on my mom’s grave because that was her birthday, and I don’t ever want to forget about her and how she raised 4 kids in a catholic household with an asshole for a husband and father. We scattered his ashes in the local river, good riddance.
Anyway, I’m just rambling now, but I think of Halloween as a night to celebrate and remember your ancestors, not hand out candy to kids who only think of it as a night to load up on free stuff and make light of death because all the stuff out there is fake. Death is very real, I tried to make my display as real and “un-funny” as I could. I had plans to up the blasphemy and realism the next year, which would have been in '15, but I never got the chance. It would have pissed-off my family, and probably our neighbors, but I guess we’ll never know.
Good for you. It means something to you, and if you mother was aware, she would smile. And that is all that matters.
Of course you understand (if you die first) your wife will treat your body just like your mother’s, put you in the ground and not pay any respects.
Personally I live in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood. Halloween doesn’t happen here.
I don’t. Never have, never will.
I have some happy memories of Halloween. It was a big deal in my little midwest town. I don’t remember too many over the top or gruesome decorations, but lots of people went all out with the treats they handed out. Homemade popcorn balls and cookies etc. When I got too old for trick or treat me and a friend would take around her little sister and any of her little friends in need of a minder. Great fun 
. Charity organizations often set up “haunted houses” as fund raisers. In one I went through a “ghoul” jumped out to scare us and my friend whacked him with her umbrella as a gut reaction. Hilarious. There were some kids who weren’t allowed to participate for religious reasons, of course. I always felt bad for them. In what must have been no later than third grade I can remember a girl’s abject terror when someone offered her a Halloween mask at school so she wouldn’t feel left out. It wasn’t Halloween that scared her, she was scared that her preacher father would find out. She regularly had switch marks on her legs. I’ve often found that christians are the worst advertisement there is for christianity.
You’re not even going to sacrifice one goat to Hekate on her night? 
Shame on you.
I live in WA, Australia.
None of the homes in our complex celebrate All hallows, (or of they do it is a very quiet one) although the American style commercialization has gradually become more and more apparent down under. Since 2010 each Halloween house is designated, registered and on a map. Anyone offering to be part of the giving treats is now vetted against the sex offenders registry.
And no, we don’t take part because we loathe the fucking idea of that American candy manufacturers profit day.
Signed Curmudgeon inc. .
Nope. I have, since I was in my twenties, felt instantly grumpy once christmasy shit began to appear in the shops, which has been earlier and earlier every year. Besides, halloween has not been a tradition here, and it is only the last few years that kids have started doing that shitshow here, as ultra-capitalist forces wondered how they could squeeze more money out of consumers, whereby they landed on importing the halloween concept. So now I feel instantly grumpy whenever christmasy and/or halloweeny shit show up in the shops. And that feeling lasts until I can sacrifice my regular Yule goat around winter solstice and wash it down with blood and some proper Yule ale and mead.
Jack o Laterns carved. AND costumes! Usually favourite serial killers. LOTS of candy! Lots of webs and things that go bump in the night.
I love fear and the scary side of life - the time to enjoy and celebrate our dark-side and embrace the coming eternal dark… bwahhhh haaa haaaaaaaaa.
I would like to give out candy to kids on Halloween, but I live at the end of a 1/2 mile private road at the top of a steep hill, and in the 11 years I’ve lived here, I haven’t gotten a single trick-or-treater.
I don’t really, it’s mainly for the kids here. Though I used to love how excited the grandchildren got when they were little, getting dressed up and makup. It is ludicrously commercialised, thank you USA…
TBH I don’t answer the door now, otherwise I’d be handing out sweets all fucking night, bless em. 
I know that she probably wouldn’t come back to the cemetery once I’m in the ground, that’s why I’ve told her and our kids that I want a jack-o-lantern placed on my grave every year on Halloween. She’s hinted that she has no plans to do what I asked her to do, but my kids understand and said they’d do it for me.
Wait until she sees what I want on my headstone.
Don’t tempt me, I did get a pentacle memorial tattoo when she died. I wanted to do a pentagram memorial, but my wife went apeshit about that, go figure.
When I was 22. I got a tattoo of a black and blue pentagram on right shoulder. I wish I hadn’t because my mom, being a Christian, asks me if I’m a Pagan or into witch craft and I’ve told her over and over that I don’t believe that gods or anything supernatural exists. She doesn’t listen.
- Go to a giant family gathering.
- Be automatically relegated to designated driver (even though I’m not 21 yet, my cousins drink as early as 15).
- Also babysit my little cousins
- Watch as my family gets snockered.
- Not have fun at all.
I’m pretty sure your personal meme or avatar (a Hubble telescope photo of Andromeda?) is the same photo I had for my computer’s wallpaper for years. I just had to mention it.
But the wife and I don’t do much on Halloween. We either go out and leave the house for the evening or we stay in and shut the lights off.
In the past we did get candy and hand out rations to the little beggars, ha. But we lost the ‘enthusiasm’ to buy treats and answer the door every 5 or 10 minutes.
As a kid I went out and begged for the handouts. But by age 11 or so, I lost interest. When I thought about it, as a christian at the time, the holiday seemed to me to be a celebration of hell, which made the holiday more repulsive.
That doesn’t matter to me now. And if people want to have fun with it, more power to them.
Nope, nothing that mundane. When our mom died in 2010, my sisters and I had to go to the funeral home to make all the arrangements, and when the subject came up, I was told that you can pretty much put anything on your headstone.
I’ve been keeping a private “journal” that I started in 2014 when my health began to be a major factor, and it contains all the instructions for my death and burial. My wife doesn’t even know it exists, but I’ve told our kids about it and where they can find it.
I’ve included a sketch of exactly what I want on my marker, and my wife is going to hate it. It’s an unpolished upright stone with a pentagram on top center with an inverted crucifix on either side.
Then the usual inscription, year of birth and death, husband and father, the usual stuff. Then below that, I want 2 jack-o-lanterns and the inscription “MR. MACABRE” at the bottom.
My wife has hinted that she has no reason to ever go back to the cemetery, and therefore probably never will, so she can’t have any objections to what’s on my tombstone, THE END.
I have a Halloween party for 300 kids. I decorate 6 classrooms and a gym. I must invent at least one Halloween game for each of the classes. I dress up in a Halloween costume, pass out any chocolates I don’t pork out on, and fucking hate myself the next day, for being such a fat pig, so, I buy some Hagandaas and go into a junk food spiral until January 1st when the fireworks wake me from my sugar induced stupor and I peel the Burger King wrappers off my naked thighs, blow the french fries out of my nose and pull my cell phone out of my ass to call someone to come and pick me up. It’s the same ole thing every year.
Uh…thanks so much for planting that image in my over-fertile innocent mind…
