Halloween started as a Celtic festival to celebrate the dead spirits that returned to Earth every October 31. The Celts believed these spirits made it easier for priests to make predictions about the future, and every year they would dress up in animal heads and skins and tell each other’s fortunes, and then do some stuff with bonfires.
This Celtic tradition changed when the Romans took over, and again when Christianity spread through the Celtic territories. But it still remained as a day to honor the dead, and was celebrated with bonfires, parades, and dressing up—but as angels, saints, and devils and not in dead animal.
Hmm…so how did we go from celebrating spirits to giving out free candy?
I’ve never been much into Halloween. I just don’t see the rationale behind telling kids to avoid taking candy from strangers, but then make an exception on October 31st. And it isn’t really much of an exception when you think about it: parents still have to check all the candy for glass or needles or whatever it is weirdoes put in there—like they would if their kid received candy from a random person on any of the other 364 days. I don’t get it! How does that make any sense?
Needless to say, Halloween and I aren’t very cool with each other. I mean, we’re mature enough to be fake nice to each other when we meet every year, but we both know it’s just a cover-up for our true feelings.
Halloween sees his day as a positive social tradition where cute children dress in costumes and visit nearby families, and everyone gets to enjoy enough of the spirit of giving to last them until December. I see it as a day where strange kids you have never met or even seen before show up at your door and demand candy.
This tradition is very, very annoying. Trick-or-treaters are a threat to the candy stash I have painstakingly amassed, and I would very much like to just close the door on them, but I can’t. Failure to appease trick-or-treaters on Halloween is an egregious offense, and those kids will make you pay!
And you know they will. What’s the first thing they do the minute you open the door? They greet you with a threat! Allow me to dissect the two most common ones:
1. “Trick or treat!”
Translation: give me candy, or else I’ll toilet paper your house!
2. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear!”
Translation: if you don’t sniff my stank feet and then give me delicious candy, I’m going to make you have to register as a sex offender!
And don’t be fooled by the kids’ costumes. Even though they are dressed like a baby Batman or some little honeybee, that does not mean you can get away with giving them air or, worse, dry-ass granola. (Sidebar: Do not go there. I’m telling you: avoid giving apples, raisins, or any other healthy snacks. We may be fighting a war against childhood obesity, but there is a cease-fire agreement every October 31st.) That costume is the kid’s version of a ski mask—and he is wearing it because he knows he can get revenge, while all you can do is file a police report that Pikachu egged your house and toilet papered your trees.
absolutangel64 
I thought it was dress-up like hos day?
lol hahah give them half a piece of chewed gum… hahah jk 😛@cbr600 – oh yah… i was gonna say that… an excuse to dress like a whore wooohooo! hahaha
I’m gonna put out an APB on all Pikachu’s this Halloween
I love Halloween, just because I like all the specials they have on TV. Between the scary movies and the ghost documentaries, I’m set…although the scary movies edit out all the good, gory parts.
I got a roll of scotch tape one year trick or treating. all though i think the best treat was a can of root beer. 🙂
pikachu egging a house… that one made me smile
They say “trick or treat” meaning you are suppose to give them candy or scare them. The scaring part is a lost tradition in many parts of the U.S. though. Or did you know that?Why don’t you scare them? Once a guy who looked like Jason Alexander gave me vitamin hard candies. That year I was a little old to be trick or treating and I dressed like a cross between the mad hatter and a pimp.Good times.-Alexander the Zounderkite
Haha, good point although most of the kids in my neighborhood are pretty nice…but then again, I don’t mind giving candy. It means that there’s less for me to binge on and become fat. 😀
I usually make sure our front light is turned off and they don’t come. If they do, by chance, end up coming, I tell them we’ve run out – and I make sure I have some in my hand hah. But if the kids are young (read: with their parents), then I’ll end up giving some to them out of pity and slight fear.
I’m never home for it, or so I say.
pikachu got me too! and he didn’t use vaseline!
The candy stash is a sacred thing… Relinquish for NO ONE!!!
you don’t have to give out candy. you can give them whatever you want. candy can be dangerous cuz they don’t know what can be laced inside like you said. and, they give the kids cavities too. maybe you can give them toothbrushes. 😀
After I turned 20 or so, Halloween stopped being for kids and started being for girls dressed up like sluts. It then became my favorite holiday EVAR. And yes, I spelled ever wrong on purpose. I’m leet.
Yours is a perfectly ordinary attitude for an adult with no children, but you may find your attitude changing should you decide to have children.I enjoyed Halloween as a child, (What’s not to like about free candy?) and this was in the days BEFORE your parents had to check every piece of candy looking for signs of tampering. However, I had little interest as a bachelor (I’ve been to only one or two costume parties in my life and NEVER went to work in a costume.) or even as a father of babies (I didn’t start turning on the lights and handing out candy until my children were old enough to have friends who went trick or treating.). I never bothered to buy them baby Halloween costumes when they were too young to understand; if the neighbors invited them to go trick or treating with their kids, they went in their street clothes.But THIS year, at 6 and 4, they finally got excited about Halloween, They wanted Halloween decorations so I dragged out the ones that had never been used before. They wanted costumes so I bought them costumes and then gently explained that if they wore them every day, the costumes might fall apart before Halloween. This year for the first time in many a year Halloween will be a lot of fun for me…because it will be a lot of fun for them, and I get a kick out of watching their wide-eyed joy at something which for them is “brand new”. As for why kids do this on Halloween, blame the Victorians. Like most of our children’s Holiday traditions, this began with that first group of middle classers well enough off that they didn’t have to view their children exclusively as sources of income and could instead afford to indulge them by inventing “childhood”.
You must have pissed off a lot of little kids if they’re TPing your house every year. Perhaps your poor review of toilet paper pissed off the people at Kirkland and they’re just getting revenge. The TP mafia is spiteful like that.
i like to think of Halloween as a day to get wicked legally.
We pass out pretzels and popcorn balls. They are healthy and kids do like them. My beef with Halloween is that 99% of the costumes made for any females older than 6 are slutty. Slutty maid, slutty nurse, slutty angel, slutty devil, slutty pumpkin, slutty zombie.
All your candy stash are belong to them.and.@XbabyK – i don’t have as much a problem w/ it =D
im glad that you got those translations down.. now i know what those devil spawn really mean when they are chanting at your door…
I actually enjoy halloween as an adult more than a kid..haha
The worst is when you have kids in high school and middle school come to a door in a t-shirt and just open their bags without saying a word. They’re too frickin’ old to go trick or treating!
I love love love the conversation between you and halloween. College students get way too excited over halloween here. It’s not like they don’t have costume and theme parties any other night of the year.
LOL! Makes me think of how I used to give out candies b/c I liked seeing the kids in their cute costumes, but slowly and slowly (like starting 3 years ago) I started to feel like I was doing it to protect my house/yard/car from vandalism! Kids these days are vicious!
When I was a kid and could trick-or-treat, I loved Halloween because it meant I had a pretty hefty candy stash that often lasted me a large part of the year. Now that I’m too old to trick-or-treat though, I’m kind of sick of the holiday. For teens/adults (girls at least) it seems like it’s just an excuse to dress slutty for a day without being labeled a slut.
On Halloween I usually park my butt in the highest window of my house with my paint ball gun and attached laser pointer waiting…I’m like a marine protecting a US embassy in a hot-zone – I’m not afraid to shoot the civilian bumble-bee girl or the tiny ninja turtle boy. You don’t know if they have TP or eggs underneath the white sheet. If I see any agressive mannerisms I’mma lay one on them!
my mom told me not to give out candy for my first halloween this year because she got scared before when these kids who were bigger than her came to get candy.
I never stay home on Halloween night. For exactly all these reasons.You should have included in this rant how Halloween has become a reason for girls to dress up like skanky Paris-wannabe sluts, and nothing is wrong with it, just because its Halloween. I can’t even go shopping for a costume, cause thats the only kind of costume they sell. Whats worse, fat girls wear those costumes. Seeing a girl prance around dressed as a sexy nun is bad enough, but its a hundred times worse when its a 150 lb girl whose only showing off her cellulite. Ugh. Sorry, its a pet peeve of mine, jeje….
“Translation: if you don’t sniff my stank feet and then give me delicious candy, I’m going to make you have to register as a sex offender!”FDL!
“fdl” is an acronym of my own concoction ^_^I’ve been using it for a couple years and now all of my friends use it.it directly translates “falls down laughing”why? because it makes more sense to fall down laughing than to roll on the floor laughing, it is especially useful to use before an “rotfl” for the sake of sensible sequence of actions… well, because you need to thusly fall to the floor before you begin to roll on it.and yes, you have my permission to use it.
@cbr600 – LOL
@hopelessromantic@datingish – oh i still label them slutty haha. for halloween a few years ago in high school i was a rice farmer, didnt get many cat calls that night =/
i love your graphic =)
One thing you can do is go out and buy the liquor filled chocolates, like my favorite the Kahlua ones…..it’s not actually alcohol (I don’t think) so kids can eat them, so the kids will think you’re sooooo cool for handing it out but parents will never ever let their kids come back to your apartment again….but just check the law books just in case you get some sue happy parents (I happen to think it’s totally worth it)….I have to say, I’m glad I haven’t had to deal with the whole handing out treats bit….I’m still in that going to parties dressed as a skank bit, and boy do I like it!
@supanamu – /signed.
Hehe…opening the door in a creepy monk costume while my brother and sister-in-law scream bloody murder down the hall sure makes those cute little honeybees and Batman go running.