As an American, it strikes me every year that Halloween is pretty much the only widely celebrated public event where people go out in their neighborhoods to socialize and celebrate together. Not even the 4th of July commands such activity, nor any of the religious holidays.
And yet, it is heavily commercialized, representing a huge subsidy to the sugar industry as people exchange candy in a wide circle, getting back just as much as they gave out, with no real net candy benefit to anyone, and probably net negative health and financial consequences to individual households.
The public displays that people put up on their houses are also getting more and more inappropriate every year, with many seeming to take pride in how scary and realistic they can make their displays look.
It is also a public celebration of make-believe. Nothing about it is rooted in anything real, or any claim of truth. In fact, it is explicitly recognized by all involved that everything about it is fake. In essence, we are celebrating make-believe, and the reason this is the only thing left to celebrate is because the culture has no more shared value or truth claim of any kind.
What say you, stackers? If SimpleStacker shaking his fist at the wind? Or is there something to my curmudgeony thoughts?
I hear you, but I'm still a fan.
As you point out, there is no other US holiday to encourages as much socializing as Halloween. Most of the time, Americans are a fairly isolated people -- not really knocking on each other's doors. Yet on this one night, widespread door-knocking is encouraged!
I agree that some of the decorations have gotten out of control...I remember a few particularly gruesome houses in Seattle that led us to skip the entire street. The neighborhood in which I'm in in Texas seems to be more cognizant of children and I haven't seen any of the super gruesome type.
As context, I should say that I was never allowed to participate in Halloween as a child, and so there may be a bit of vicarious living going on in my enjoyment of the holiday in my adulthood.
It's not so much that I detest Halloween, it's more that I'm saddened that the only thing that could unify us enough to go out and spend time together is something that everyone agrees is false.
false may be putting it a bit too strong. Monsters, ghosts, and death are things that have intrigued humans going way back into our past. While there's a lot of make-believe there, this doesn't mean that it's not serving some important purpose. So if we say it's all just falsehood, it implies that we'd be better off without it and I don't think that's true.
Sports are another form of made-up things that brings people together. Chasing a ball like it matters is outwardly laughable. No one cares about the ball. And yet, sporting events are a huge source of bringing humans into community with each other -- because we all manage to care deeply about a pointless ball.
It's possible that caring about pretend things plays an important role in human society and that it's not the case that we would be better off if we only cared about real things. Possibly, caring about pretend things lets us come to agreement, where trying to do so over real things would be more likely to result in violence.
You two ever read On Fairy Stories? At the risk of being presumptuous, I feel like it's right up your collective alleys. It gets a little tedious at times, but as a philosophical piece on art, it's one of my all time favorite reads...
I've read this, and Tolkien is one of my favorites, so I'd have to agree with you guys on the value of make-believe.
That being said, in most of human history the make-believe was done within a society that mostly held to some shared truth claims. I think modern western society has mostly excised itself of all truth claims. That seems new.
We seem to live in a society where you can proudly boast of your make-believe, but proudly boast of something you believe is true and you will be seen as a dangerous individual.
I don't believe I have...but it's sure on my list now. thanks for the recommendation.
I was going to make basically your same points. There must be some cross-cultural appeal to Halloween though because although some places resist it because it's too American (looking at you Europe) it is growing strongly in Asia from what I understand. Humans have always had a fascination with death and the macabre and Halloween is a chance to get it out of the system culturally.
I also disagree with the point that Halloween is the only holiday that brings people together anymore. At least where I live, there are far more Xmas social gatherings of all kinds.
Christmas social gatherings, but private, right? Meaning mostly between friends and family. It's not something public that brings the neighborhood together anymore.
I feel like I’ve made similar complaints in recent years.
I did shell out for candy that is less purely toxic industrial sludge, so my conscience is a bit lighter than last year.
It’s fun for kids. Drink some settle-down juice.
Dude, I'm an economist. Being an asshole is in our DNA.
I plan to give out Pokemon cards.... a bunch of the worthless common cards that you get in bulk from opening packs... but the kids will probably dig it.
Give them the unopened bags instead so kids will get some excitement in true Halloween fashion
Have you tried getting your hands on sealed product lately? It's basically impossible unless you're welling to shell out 300% markups to the scalpers.
Aah ok I don’t know anything about Pokemon cards.
I would then give them some other unopened collectible crap cards from the supermarket. It’s about the excitement of opening the bag.
Or load up some corn on a wallet and give them “mysterious 12 words”..
yeah pokemon card market is absolutely ridiculous right now. basically impossible to buy at MSRP unless you know the restock timing at retailers.
mysterious 12 words is a nice idea, i wonder if anyone has tried it here.
I’ve noticed more people also giving out cheap worthless crap. Kids do seem to enjoy it and at least it’s not poison.
I hate this. I mean, I have to concede that this argument is almost entirely flawless (except the part about make-believe, which I am convinced has real value), but its just so much a part of the culture I grew up in. Most of those people are now dead, so I hope I'm not passing on a bad idea to the next generation just because I miss the last one. Old habits die hard I guess.
My father-in-law was over the other day and saw one of my neighbors putting up the kind of display you describe. He called it "tacky" and I remember thinking that the tackiness doesn't bug me. The macabre element of it does though. But maybe what's the difference between my cartoonish Frankenstein monster and my neighbor's really scary stuff? One's not actually scary, but it's still making entertainment out of a perverse idea. I dunno. You're probably right, but I'm still going to make a sad emoji. :(
Isn't that interesting though? Me dumping on Halloween made you sad. It's as if the only thing sacred in our society is the profane.
Btw, I don't hate Halloween, As I said below,
I don't know if I'd go that far. There are lots of good things that the broader community I'm in finds sacred. More so when I'd whittle it down to my friend group. It's certainly not as widespread as it should be, but there's plenty of celebration of the beautiful if you're looking for it, at least in my neck o' the woods.
But you're definitely right about there being something off in my excitement to "celebrate" the profane. I'm definitely trying to wrap my head around exactly why I find it so fun. It's certainly a holiday "celebrating" things that I don't value outside of the pretend.
Yeah, I know its a thought piece, and a good one at that. I'm just kind of processing openly.
The thing I mostly dislike about Halloween is that when you're outside the US, especially the past 2 decades, big commerce has been trying to make it happen elsewhere, but without the social element, bar for plenty of late night parties, but those could have happened for any other reason.
I think that in the US, it at least has some social element to it and that you should be glad that that is retained, at least for a little. Across the pond, it is purely a means to increase sales of rubbish. It helps Europoors to feel like they are a little American too, by spending their much harder earned shitcoins on insanely expensive shit they don't need.
In your position, I'd embrace the social element to it.
I wonder why it doesn't happen as much in other countries? I think single family neighborhoods are a big element to it. People love seeing the decorations and going house to house. Wouldn't work as well in higher density residential areas.
In Northern France / Western Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands (maybe elsewhere too) they have St. Martin's on 11/11 that has a trick-or-treat element to it. That is social. It's just that Halloween gets exported for commerce, not to enrich the social life.
Your criticisms very much align with the more conservative Christian takes on Halloween. Growing up we always celebrated All Souls Day/Dia de los muertos(for the hispanics), and many people I knew generally looked down on Halloween as a secular perversion of the religious holiday.
I'm not sure if Halloween is special in its lack of meaning though. Many holidays like Christmas and Easter have become so secular to the point of not containing much of their religious roots at all, unless you are religuous and make the point of celibrating that aspect. I'm not sure if people cosplaying and asking for candy, is that much worse than people doing treasurehunts for candy inside plastic eggs.
That's fair, but my point is that usually those holidays are not celebrated publicly, but privately.