I find this to be pretty cool. Good on you guys for trying to give the kids a bit of the normal Halloween experience. Five homes, all non-Chinese, is better than nothing!
Couple years ago some friends of mine dressed up as the main characters from Journey to the West, in full on Monkey King and Tang Sung and whatnot costumes (boring old me didn’t dress up at all), for Halloween. We decided to walk to the party and, man, the looks we got from people on the street were absolutely priceless.
Halloween has really taken off in Thailand. Everyone knows it now. But there’s next to no trick-or-treating; it’s really for adults mostly.
When the wife and I first returned to Thailand so many years ago, a handful of bars may have offered some sort of Halloween beer special, and if a Thai was familiar with the occasion, it was a sure sign he or she had spent some time in the West. I recall what I think was our first Halloween back here, and we were riding a Bangkok bus that night, when two Thai men dressed up as ghouls or accident victims or some such boarded at one stop. Obviously, it was for Halloween, but it gave quite a shock to all aboard, I’ll clue ya!
Now Halloween is everywhere. I doubt there’s not a single bar (apart from small beer bars, but some of those too!), Western restaurant or shopping center that doe not have something going on. It’s even not unheard of for the performers in the live nude lesbian sex shows to apply zombie makeup!
Activities for children are usually relegated to costume contests in shopping centers and maybe a little trick-or-treating in Western-style apartment blocks inhabited mainly by Westerners, so it’s just among friends. Halloween has basically become yet another excuse for the locals here to go out and get drunk, albeit in costume.
Yes and no. In Spain it’s become strong enough to create a backlash, so on one hand it’s well-known (which it wasn’t before the first movie of that name came out), and many schools are celebrating it or trying to, on the other the “trying to” is leading to parents saying “waitaminute here, I’m not supposed to take my kid to visit Grandad at the cementery on November 2nd because ‘it might traumatize him’, but Freddy Krueger is OK? Oh no señor! ¡Y una mierda!” (and yes, I know Freddy is from Nightmare in Elm Street - people here mix the two franchises).
Last week some supermarkets in my area had chocolate specials, but no mention of Halloween. It was just “wanna buy some chocolate day” or something, they make it look more like a “clearing house on sweets to leave space for the upcoming marzipan and nougat” than a “what the heck is that pumpkin thing day”; they’ve moved the clearing house a couple weeks ahead but avoid any mention of imported holidays. Many people still associate those round orange pumpkins more with Ruperta, the dancing mascot of TV legend 1, 2, 3, than with any kind of scared-ness.
The traditional dress-up week here is Carnavales, the week before Lent; during Franco’s rule Carnavales were forbidden or restricted in many areas, so people moved the disguises to New Year’s Eve… or went and broke the law (depending on the location, the cops would be in the party too).
I would agree 100% with this. The past couple of years or so have seen no trick or treaters whatsoever at my door. Adults still get together for parties though.
OP here.
Now that I opened my big mouth, we had a grand total of ONE ringing of the doorbell here in Las Vegas tonight - about 5 or 6 of the cutest little kids in really great costumes! Probably the best costumes I have seen in years - but still, lowest turnout ever!
All I can think is because it was Sunday, people had parties at home and tomorrow is a school day so kids didn’t go out as much.
I do know that last night (Saturday) was the big night for all of the adult Halloween parties in the nightclubs on The Strip, so perhaps that too had something to do with Halloween being “over” by Sunday. Maybe parents had the parties for the kids on Saturday, knowing that this was a school night.
Whatever will we do with the 400 pounds of leftover candy?!
(So embarrassing when you toss out a garden-sized garbage bag filled with wrappers of “fun sized” chocolate bars…)
I’ve lived at this house for 4 years and never had a trick or treater - and it’s a suburb with lots of young children (in Australia) - before that in NZ for 15 years and not one there either.
In the Netherlands it is becoming more of thing lately, but still pretty obscure. I don’t think it is very common to have kids come by the door for candy (maybe in some areas groups of parents did set something up, but not on any large scale), but that might be because we have our own version of ‘dress up and ask for sweets’ in St Maarten.
I did notice there were quite a lot of haloween parties in clubs and the like; at least more than there used to be. The last weekend of october (which fit Halloween this year) is more famous for the end of daylight savings (or beginning?) which means you get an extra hour of partying 
That’s sort of the point, though. As far as I know, most people don’t go ranging miles from home (unless you’re a super candy addict) just to get extra candy. It’s virtually all neighborhood kids. Even if you don’t know them, there’s a communal feel created by being able to go “begging” door to door, showing off your costume and having fun with your friends.
I understand it’s different in Oz, but a sentiment like that in America would sound pretty grinchy.
The kids were all too busy celebrating Nevada Day, of course
My experience is similar. I once saw some kids dressed up, way down some street, but they never came to my apartment block. That was the only time I ever saw evidence that Halloween is even attempted here.
Part of the problem is that as it’s Spring and after Daylight Saving has begun, it is light until 8pm. Not very evocatively spooky.
Well, I wouldn’t approve of my own kids begging candy off people I don’t know so I certainly don’t approve of random neighbourhood kids who I’ve never laid eyes on before begging candy off me. My ex had lived in the US for 10 years and he said things were different there - you did know most of the people in your neighbourhood, they often get together for parties and things, and so you were knocking on the doors of people you knew. Different neighbourhoods have different levels of interaction, of course. But most of the places I’ve lived, there hasn’t been a real community vibe like he described in his old neighbourhoods in Houston and Tulsa.
I didn’t know Stephen Colbert was an Ozzie.
The one set of trick-or-treaters we had came well before dark–before 6:00, even.
Canberra, Australia. Actually had one this year, first one for a long time. It’s possible they get a bit of stick, or at least virulent disinterest, and that ends the experiment.
A bit of stick? Now that is stingy. At least give them a whole stick.
When I was a kid in the 70s, Hallowe’en was a pretty big and important festival in Scotland. (They tended to celeberate Guy Fawkes night more in England, I seem to recall).
As others have stated, lanterns were carved from turnips, not pumpkins. That’s the type of turnip also known as swede in some parts - definitely big enough to carve. We’d have competitions as to who could make the best one.
We would go out “guising”. Dressed in fancy dress, but you also had to sing a song or tell a joke or a story. You would go door to door and not only get sweeties, but money as well. One year my sister and I dressed as cowgirls and sang “Red River Valley”. We came back with so much money, my Dad sent us back out round the other half of the estate.
Making the costume was as much fun and as important as the going out wearing it. Lots of crepe paper and Uhu glue was usually involved.
Other fun included dooking for apples, or trying to eat a treacle covered scone on a piece of string. And if you peeled an apple you’d successfully dooked for, and threw the peel over your shoulder by the light of the turnip lantern in front of a mirror, you would briefly see the face of the man you would marry, and the peel would land spelling his initial.
I do lament the loss of our own country’s traditions, the Americanisation, and all the shop bought costumes. But you can’t halt progress I suppose.
It’s getting more popular, but more for adult parties and general shop themes and the like. Trick-or-treating hasn’t caught on outside some more enclosed suburbs.
I recall back when I was trick-or-treating, my parents, as well as those of my friends, always admonished us not to go trick-or-treating in apartment blocks, as those were dens of iniquity. Especially don’t knock on any doors that had empty bottles of alcohol displayed in the front windows, because they were drunkards who would probably pull us in and force alcohol down our throats. We ignored our parents completely, and were a bit miffed that nothing exciting ever happened.
So, those of you who have Bonfire Night – how does this work? Does every neighborhood have its own bonfire, or does the local fire department “host” it in the village square, or what? Given how much trouble we sometimes have with firecrackers on the fourth of July, I can only imagine how much trouble the local budding young pyromaniacs might cause. What do you use for fuel – ordinary firewood, old wooden furniture, old railroad ties? Are you allowed to use that firestarter stuff we sometimes use with cookouts, or is that considered cheating? Do you burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, or is that just little kids?
Guy Fawkes Night tonight, so we are hosting a get together of friends with their children. No bonfire as it would be a bit overwhelming in our small backyard but we will have plenty of fireworks. Have a barbecue first and then light touch paper and stand clear of the fireworks. It’s a pity we can’t have rockets or crackers any more, just the “shoots flaming balls” type.
We had one group of children with their parents as chaperones on Hallowe’en. They gave us a rendition of some verse and then accepted our contribution to their bags of sweets. Also had three teenagers from the local church with their “reverse” Hallowe’en. They gave us the lollies.
On Saturday night, we went to a costume party at our friends’ place. Their teenaged daughters and their friends dressed for the party and did some traditional games, apple bobbing, marshmallows in flour, etc.