Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Halloween fun with your nippers

Totally agree....lights off, sign on front door (saying "bugger off") and we will not open the door but make sure the dog barks..like hell (humbug - oh wrong event!)

+1

One can argue about whether the US import of additional " bank holidays " makes sense. I always thought it was nonsense and superfluous. But halloween also became fashion here in Germany when our kids were little. That was 20+ years ago. And they loved to celebrate it. It was child-friendly ghost stuff. I have accepted that the children had celebrated it very gladly, together with friends somewhere else or all with us stay overnight etc..

The child's psyche functions differently from that of adults. The defense mechanisms (described by Anna Freud) that ultimately form the ego structure are gradually learnt and developed in their interaction. The little child denies something, for example. Later it doesn't do that anymore. It transforms this mechanism of denial into something else, e.g. discomfort. The ability to learn to live with uncomfortable things. Ability to compromise. If it would continue to deny and not come to an arrangement, it would be the preliminary stage of a psychosis. But on the other hand it must live through these phases. Many "cruel" contents and stories belong to the child's psyche. That's why children like fairy tales so much. But how much one makes the stories or films or disguises explicit is the responsibility of parents and adults in general. Even without being a psychologist, most people have a very good sense of what a child "needs" and "doesn't need" depending on their age.

But these photos in Bonesie's link are far beyond any decency and any healthy measure. It's disgusting and I believe that the worst perversion psychotic adults can have is cobbled to children and their world. This is no longer ok but perverse and actually very criminal.

I am an enthusiastic supporter of Halloween trick-or-treating, but that has been very much a volte-face for me since emigrating to Canada a dozen years ago. Long-time Canadian families grew up with this neighbourhood tradition, and so understand (and encourage their kids to comply with) the unwritten rules and conventions. Which, when it boils down, amount to "if you don't see a lit jack-o-lantern on the front step, they're not playing, so don't disturb them." It seems that most of the problems of yobbery in the UK stem from the fact that the tradition (with notable exceptions in teh parts of Scotland where "guising" has gone on for centuries) is relatively new and little understood.

Elementary schools encourage their pupils to dress in costume for today - with the proviso that they can't wear a mask that obscures their face. And they have to be able to sit down at their desks, so the little ones with their cardboard-box robots sometimes struggle (which is ridiculously funny to watch, but that's beside the point...). At my kids' junior school, they also do a "halloween dance-a-thon" in the gym in place of afternoon classes, which raises funds for local charitable causes.

Lots of people go overboard decorating their houses. Animatronic ghouls; styrofoam graveyards with zombie arms sticking up (we have one of those, it's revolting!); bats and spiders hanging from the trees... Even very young kids, accompanied by parents, come round knocking on doors for trick-or-treat candy. Apart from anything else, it's a good opportunity to say hi to neighbours and catch up on local gossip

Except that this year, we're anticipating lower-than-usual foot traffic. The weather forecast for tonight is for torrential rain and howling gales, so some of the less-dedicated candy hunters will probably stay away. All the more for the rest of them - I don't want bucketloads of chocolate bars left over at the end of the night, because I'll only end up eating them, and that won't help my quest to regain the svelte figure that's somewhere in there under all the blubber...