![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_t_220Y'know, there's people on my friends list putting up Halloween decorations already?
I guess after so long hanging out online with Halloween-obsessed American peoples this shouldn't really surprise me, but it just still comes under my list of weirdly astounding stuff.
Halloween is a deeply under-represented holiday here, y'know. Hell we don't even get pumpkins till the last 2 weeks of the month and even then they generally suck with their tiny-ness.
Decorating for the season is most generally an alien concept, and the few people who will make the effort of leaving a pumpkin on their doorstep will usually discover that it's been nicked before the evening is out.
So, as an educational endeavour, I will describe you all a typical halloween in my home town.
It begins, as it does every year, when the supermarkets start putting out the christmas decorations at the end of September.
Many years ago they used to wait until after Guy Fawlkes on November 5th to start with the Christmas cheer, but not any longer. Christmas now runs concurrently with both Halloween and Bonfire Night making a holiday season that it roughly three and a half months long.
The students at the university will most likely have some kind of costumed event that will consist of much heavy drinking and possibly a band, but it will take place in the Union building on the main campus and no one but students will be able to get in without a severe grilling by the gate security.
For the average household (that of the 2.4 child variety) Halloween itself will consist of one anemic pumpkin and possibly a really bad movie or two. At some point along the line you will see maybe two or three trick or treaters. In the run up to the actual event, several small children will go trick or treating on the wrong day, without costume, demanding money.
This is not trick or treating, but apparently they do not know this. General practice is to tell them to go away and come back when it actually IS halloween. This most often confuses them and they never return because they don't know which day they're supposed to come back on.
On an average year, I will be a Nanny Ogg to Charlie's Granny Weatherwax and Rachie's Magrat. In retrospect, were I to be in the country this year, we should really have gotten Bunny to be King Verance, but as I'm not then we won't. The Discworld referances will have to wait till next year.
Most often we will end up sitting in a pub for a while, getting funny looks for being the only people in costume. Once this is acomplished we will return to Charlie's where we will bake either soda bread or gingerbread, occasionally make ice cream, and usually drink cocoa.
If it's not raining we may contemplate harassing the neighbours by ringing doorbells and running away, but it's rained every year for the last 4 so we usually just watch anime and eat Pringles.
Eventually we will go to bed and sleep, and by the next day the supermarkets will be selling slightly squishy reject pumpkins on discount and we'll be wondering exactly how it is that Halloween, always so glam and entertaining in the movies, is always such an intense anticlimax.
I've yet to discover if this is just a regional occurance, or even one specific to this and a few surrounding towns. But whatever it is, people, we suck at Halloween.
I should probably qualify this post somehow by saying that I'll actually be in America for it this year. I don't know what I'm expecting, or indeed if I'm expecting anything at all, because so far as I can tell halloween seems to have an entirely different cultural lexicon across the Atlantic.
Should be interesting though, whichever way you slice it.
And at the very least it'll make a change for the whole shebang to be greeted with something other than cynical apathy.
I guess after so long hanging out online with Halloween-obsessed American peoples this shouldn't really surprise me, but it just still comes under my list of weirdly astounding stuff.
Halloween is a deeply under-represented holiday here, y'know. Hell we don't even get pumpkins till the last 2 weeks of the month and even then they generally suck with their tiny-ness.
Decorating for the season is most generally an alien concept, and the few people who will make the effort of leaving a pumpkin on their doorstep will usually discover that it's been nicked before the evening is out.
So, as an educational endeavour, I will describe you all a typical halloween in my home town.
It begins, as it does every year, when the supermarkets start putting out the christmas decorations at the end of September.
Many years ago they used to wait until after Guy Fawlkes on November 5th to start with the Christmas cheer, but not any longer. Christmas now runs concurrently with both Halloween and Bonfire Night making a holiday season that it roughly three and a half months long.
The students at the university will most likely have some kind of costumed event that will consist of much heavy drinking and possibly a band, but it will take place in the Union building on the main campus and no one but students will be able to get in without a severe grilling by the gate security.
For the average household (that of the 2.4 child variety) Halloween itself will consist of one anemic pumpkin and possibly a really bad movie or two. At some point along the line you will see maybe two or three trick or treaters. In the run up to the actual event, several small children will go trick or treating on the wrong day, without costume, demanding money.
This is not trick or treating, but apparently they do not know this. General practice is to tell them to go away and come back when it actually IS halloween. This most often confuses them and they never return because they don't know which day they're supposed to come back on.
On an average year, I will be a Nanny Ogg to Charlie's Granny Weatherwax and Rachie's Magrat. In retrospect, were I to be in the country this year, we should really have gotten Bunny to be King Verance, but as I'm not then we won't. The Discworld referances will have to wait till next year.
Most often we will end up sitting in a pub for a while, getting funny looks for being the only people in costume. Once this is acomplished we will return to Charlie's where we will bake either soda bread or gingerbread, occasionally make ice cream, and usually drink cocoa.
If it's not raining we may contemplate harassing the neighbours by ringing doorbells and running away, but it's rained every year for the last 4 so we usually just watch anime and eat Pringles.
Eventually we will go to bed and sleep, and by the next day the supermarkets will be selling slightly squishy reject pumpkins on discount and we'll be wondering exactly how it is that Halloween, always so glam and entertaining in the movies, is always such an intense anticlimax.
I've yet to discover if this is just a regional occurance, or even one specific to this and a few surrounding towns. But whatever it is, people, we suck at Halloween.
I should probably qualify this post somehow by saying that I'll actually be in America for it this year. I don't know what I'm expecting, or indeed if I'm expecting anything at all, because so far as I can tell halloween seems to have an entirely different cultural lexicon across the Atlantic.
Should be interesting though, whichever way you slice it.
And at the very least it'll make a change for the whole shebang to be greeted with something other than cynical apathy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-01 07:55 pm (UTC)Should be interesting.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 12:16 am (UTC)I was just flabberghasted that some people decorate for the entire month of October... that's just...
I have no words for the weirdness of that concept.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 09:18 am (UTC)Now the stores bring out the knick-knacks, tableware, flags, lighted displays for the yard, crap to hang on trees, fog machines, scary noise-makers, centerpeices, themed clothing (not costumes but sweaters, socks and shirts) and candy right around mid-August.
I don't know who these people are that buy this crap and cover their homes with halloween-themes decor but if I did, I'd smack them.
That said, I'm verrry excited about being in Greenwich Villiage for the holiday. Whatever will I wear???
no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 11:11 am (UTC)...and that would be just as not pretty as it sounds....
(but if anyone else can pull off going as Wolvie, I will envy them )
no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 11:19 am (UTC)You and me both.
Though I'm a whole inch taller than Comic Wolvie. ;p
no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 11:22 am (UTC)We'll go as twins, then!
;-p
no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 11:26 am (UTC)Well that could be interesting to see...