Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Halloween is evil, yes evil I tell you

Actually I logged on and expected someone else to have beat me to this particular rant... Why I hate Halloween:
1. Ruin a perfectly nice pagan tradition by hyping it up with marketing
2. Completely appropriate in the US, I'll even go so far as temperate northern hemisphere countries - not subtropical southern ones
3. Teaching children that bullying complete strangers for lollies (sorry) candy is OK
4. Eating your own body weight in candy in one night is ok
5. Marketeers jumping on the bandwagon - thus "creating" a new market through pester power - there is an answer - it's NO

Maybe others think that it's cute and inocuous... I consider it evil and insidious... but hey - I don't like Australia Day either...

4 comments:

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

it IS evil, and the word 'candy' makes me go ballistic at the best of times.

Mousicles said...

It is an American tradition, not ours.

Wandering the streets doorknocking for stuff just isn't done here. It certainly doesn't work unless the community is involved. It could be a great bonding experience in some places of the USA.

(Reminds me of evenings in Merida, Spain, where the whole town would take a walk along the river and people would gather to talk and the kids would play in the squares. Great community gathering)

Thanksgiving is fine if it is run by a real American, but otherwise, it's not an Australian tradition and we shouldn't buy into it.

Basically, any named festival 'day' is a reason to market junk to people and kids in particular. (mother's day, father's day, valentine's day, easter, Christmas!!!...) They are all evil now.

Just say no.

I plan to. Bah humbug!

Wenchilada said...

I had some kids knock on my door a couple of years back when I was living in Rose Bay. I had nothing to give them because I wasn't expecting to have to give anything really, being unaware of it supposedly being Halloween and Halloween being something not traditionally celebrated here.

So I gave them some Roll-Ups I just happened to have. And do you know what they said?

"Is this all you've got?!"

Snotty nosed little shits.

Should've just said no.

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

ooh, roll-ups, I'm amazed you weren't tarred, feathered, and run out of town...

I heard someone on the radio the other day saying how Halloween was a tradition that the Americans made up blah blah blah, and I got so cross.

if you're going to talk about the origins of anything, get it right, so other people can realise that Halloween was once really interesting and meaningful (for the time) and a pagan thang and the USA just appropriated it and turned it into a big fat marketing venture.

well, okay, at first in the US it was appropriate and meaningful because people really did believe in appeasing the unknown just in case - but then it quickly became hello, I can make a bundle of money out of pumpkin-shaped cr@p. and I can force junk food out of people who don't want to buy into this whole game.

bleh. bring back the ghosts and piskies. I'd rather leave a snackling out for them.