HALLOWEEN

Is there an Ebenezer Scrooge of Halloween? You sound like a contender!!

I enjoy it as a social event. Our geography isn’t frozen by this time of the year, so much of the neighborhood will setup shop in their driveways for a couple hours and wander to each other’s place for a chat while the kids come by. Plenty of elementary school age kids and younger out with their parents, so it’s fun.

One of our friends hosts a social event the weekend beforehand where they cover their driveway with plastic sheeting (for cleanup), provide tools, and have a massive pumpkin carving party for all their friends and neighbors in the front yard with potluck snacks.

I do miss less paranoid times as a child when we would hand-make popcorn balls to give out, or sometimes even caramel apples.

I am saving myself for Bonfire night with enough fireworks to annoy every neighbour in the street!!!!

Guy Fawkes Day: A Brief History
www.history.com/news/guy-fawkes-day-a-brief-history


After the plot was revealed, Londoners began lighting celebratory bonfires, and in January 1606 an act of Parliament designated November 5 as a day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Day festivities soon spread as far as the American colonies, where they became known as Pope Day. In keeping with the anti-Catholic sentiment of the time, British subjects on both sides of the Atlantic would burn an effigy of the pope. That tradition completely died out in the United States by the 19th century, whereas in Britain Guy Fawkes Day became a time to get together with friends and family, set off fireworks, light bonfires, attend parades and burn effigies of Fawkes. Children traditionally wheeled around their effigies demanding a “penny for the Guy” (a similar custom to Halloween trick-or-treating) and imploring crowds to “remember, remember the fifth of November.”

Halloween has always been a wonderful time of meeting neighbors, giving, and seeing all the children. I have ALWAYS participated.

The part that 'ticks me off' is my fellow neighbors. We watched the grandmother across the street send her little 2 yr old grandaughter, and son in law, to our house and a few of the other neighbors houses. The son in law then left with his daughter. Grandma turned off all her lights and stayed in the house drinking her beer. (reminds me of a controlling refuser).
My woman actually asked her about it. She told my woman " My grand daughter is happy going around getting candy, and going trick or treating but, I don't want no kids coming to my house bothering me".

Can you say " double standards?"

I had a similar thing happen with a neighbor where I used to live with my ex. They would send their 4 kids to the neighbors houses right at dinner time, then all get in the car and leave the neighborhood, returning late with bags of candy. Meanwhile their decorated house was all turned off and shut down!

I spoke with other home owners in other neighborhoods, they all said " we had a lot less kids than last year".

More and more of my neighbors no longer participate, our street is mostly dark, so less and less kids come down our street. The parents stand in the street, on their cell phones, and no longer come up to the door and say hello.

I dreaded the weeks leading up to Bonfire Night. Boys throwing bangers around, and sometimes through the letterboxes. I’m glad we don’t have it here in the U.S.
Are you still allowed to make your own Bonfire these days?