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Halloween fun stuff and plans

ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
in Heaven
I've managed to get an array of Disney Haunted Mansion items (particularly some figures and dioramas of the Hitchhiking Ghosts, but more as well), and I have some awesome vintage-style Beistle cardboard decorations I need to do stuff with. What are other people doing? Any special movies, TV series (I'm working my way through Agatha All Along, at the moment), specials? Music? Reading? Comics? Food?

🎃👻🍬🦇💀🧡✩₊˚.⋆🕸️⋆⁺₊✧🪦🧟🎃🐈‍⬛🕯️

Comments

  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    All this Halloween stuff Is Outrage!

    You should all be making certain that your Pumpkin Patch is sincere enough to allow The Great Pumpkin to arise therefrom...
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    The Great Pumpkin has already arisen from mine - I grew a huge one this year! My sons want to carve it but I haven't decided whether to let them.

    We usually have a few decorations out the front for the trick or treaters, but very basic - a ghost made with a balloon, an old sheet, and some red lights, for example.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    edited October 4
    Hallowe'en gets earlier every year!

    It's still almost a month away!

  • RockyRogerRockyRoger Shipmate
    We have just decorated our church for Harvest Festival. Looks great and very tasteful, but I did decry the lack of pumpkins.
    I seems I shall have to honour the Great Pumpkin alone, alas.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Soon we will have Valeastweenmas. It will last all year and at all times you will be obliged to buy chocolates, cards, sticky buns, pumpkin lattes, presents, turkeys and more chocolate. Moreover, your house must be continually decked with ghosts, cobwebs, cute bunnies, red roses and fairy lights.

    No, you may not sit quietly reading a book.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    I was offered a mince pie on Thursday - my earliest ever! Yes, I did accept.

    Returning to marginally more seasonal foods, I will have to give treacle toffee another go for Bonfire Night. I'm sure it could work for Halloween too.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    My local Tess Coe has three huge boxes full of Pumpkins. The boxes are labelled *Pumpkin Patch*, but they don't look at all sincere to me.
    Firenze wrote: »
    Soon we will have Valeastweenmas. It will last all year and at all times you will be obliged to buy chocolates, cards, sticky buns, pumpkin lattes, presents, turkeys and more chocolate. Moreover, your house must be continually decked with ghosts, cobwebs, cute bunnies, red roses and fairy lights.

    No, you may not sit quietly reading a book.

    Alas! I think this manifestation of Hell has already been visited upon us...
    :scream:

  • Graven ImageGraven Image Shipmate
    My whole neighborhood is starting to decorate for Halloween. It is a big thing in our mobile home park. I have joined in the fun with a bit of decor, a witch on a stick, and some pumpkins by the mailbox.
  • ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
    North East Quine wrote: »
    Hallowe'en gets earlier every year!

    It's still almost a month away!

    The day is, sure, but I eagerly treat the whole month as Halloween season, quite happily.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Autumn is my least favourite season, for a number of reasons, but my mum loved it and so does my daughter - and our newest family member has an October birthday. So in the past couple of years I've tried to embrace it with an arrangement on our hearth of some lights, a wooden toadstool, a rat ornament, a ceramic pumpkin (having bought several small fresh ones last year and have them rot quietly and messily) and by having autumnal-coloured flowers in the house.

    My son and his husband go all out with it in their house - cobwebs, witches, ghosts, pumpkins, the whole shebang.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    Ceramic pumpkins are an excellent idea. Leaving real pumpkins to rot - no matter how sincere they may be - is an insult to The Great Pumpkin.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    edited October 5
    We put this on the door with a bowl of sweets on the step and a message by the bowl.

    "Please don't knock, wild dogs inside, help yourself to a sweet."

    We replenish the sweets every half hour.

    Otherwise we have excited barking dogs all evening!

    🎃🐾

    https://photos.app.goo.gl/zqh4TJWbMDA99dN97
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    Like this?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gge0ew19Ec&list=RD0gge0ew19Ec&start_radio=1
  • carexcarex Shipmate
    We do little decorating, unlike some of the other houses in the neighborhood. But we may at least take down the Spring wreath by the front door and put up something more seasonally appropriate.

    My job is candy to hand out to the kids who come by. I like something that can't be wolfed down in 3 seconds, to slow down the sugar rush afterwards. One of my favorites is candy canes (already in some stores), and bubble gum. Although I have to admit that the large tub of the latter (200 pieces?) that I got 2 years ago is getting a bit al dente by now.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    A friend gave me some lovely sparkly fairy lights (the lights are in little bottles with glitter) as a moving in present, which reminded me that the last time I moved, she also gave me fairy lights, though these have little felt witch's hats between the lights. So I went rummaging through the boxes I haven't unpacked yet, and voila! Perfect to decorate the front window for Hallowe'en.
  • The RogueThe Rogue Shipmate
    Last year I was doing the briefing at parkrun around Hallowe'en and chucked in loads of seasonal jokes which went down well. I'm slightly worried that they will ask me to do it again it this year because I'm not sure I can think of any new ones.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    I'm part of a history group which occasionally has events in costume. We have joked about having a Witches event on Hallowe'en at the Castlegate where, on Hallowe'en 1596, witches allegedly danced to music played by the Devil himself. Costumes would be easy, as they danced naked!

    But I'm not sure anyone would like to see my 60-something self dancing naked, and, besides, it's cold in October.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    North East Quine wrote: »
    I'm part of a history group which occasionally has events in costume. We have joked about having a Witches event on Hallowe'en at the Castlegate where, on Hallowe'en 1596, witches allegedly danced to music played by the Devil himself. Costumes would be easy, as they danced naked!

    But I'm not sure anyone would like to see my 60-something self dancing naked, and, besides, it's cold in October.

    O go on...you know you want to...'frantically dancing naked for Beelzebub' (as Jake Thackray put it) will defeat the cold...
    :naughty:
  • SparrowSparrow Shipmate
    North East Quine wrote: »
    I'm part of a history group which occasionally has events in costume. We have joked about having a Witches event on Hallowe'en at the Castlegate where, on Hallowe'en 1596, witches allegedly danced to music played by the Devil himself. Costumes would be easy, as they danced naked!

    But I'm not sure anyone would like to see my 60-something self dancing naked, and, besides, it's cold in October.

    I'm sure Terry Pratchett mentions this in his Discworld Witches books, with special reference to having to avoid unexpected thistles and hedgehogs.


  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Sparrow wrote: »
    North East Quine wrote: »
    I'm part of a history group which occasionally has events in costume. We have joked about having a Witches event on Hallowe'en at the Castlegate where, on Hallowe'en 1596, witches allegedly danced to music played by the Devil himself. Costumes would be easy, as they danced naked!

    But I'm not sure anyone would like to see my 60-something self dancing naked, and, besides, it's cold in October.

    I'm sure Terry Pratchett mentions this in his Discworld Witches books, with special reference to having to avoid unexpected thistles and hedgehogs.


    Think Nanny Ogg described it as "prancing about with no drawers on" and didn't approve.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    I live in a non-residential area (either side of where I live is a nature reserve and a car park) so nobody in the area is decorating for Halloween - but there's been a tawny owl hooting away every night, and there are lots of rats about because of being next ro the river, so we have nature's decorations instead.

    I love autumn but don't really care for either Halloween as a cultural celebration or Bonfire Night as let's-burn-Catholics-night (attending the Lewes bonfires when I lived in Sussex rather turned me off the whole thing). For me it bothers me that autumn can't just be autumn without being turned into one big commercial advertising holiday. I celebrate All Saints' and All Souls' as exemplifying the true goth soul of late autumn rather than some tacky costume ever could.
  • Stercus TauriStercus Tauri Shipmate
    The stores around here are offering 10 ft high black skeletons for garden decorations. Apparently, they sell well. I hate skeletons and have done all my life.
  • rhubarbrhubarb Shipmate
    Nobody bothers with Halloween where live. It seems such a silly and pointless celebration. It also seems a waste of yummy pumpkins to make my favourite pumpkin soup. (sorry to those who are offended).
  • ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
    Could I suggest that people who don’t like Halloween not yuck the yums of those of us who do here on a Heaven thread? There could be a Purgatory thread about whether one should celebrate it—this is specifically for us who do, and what fun stuff we’re doing. (I don’t know if the more reverent aspects of the holiday, plus All Saints’ and All Souls’, would go here or on the All Saints board.)
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    I am hoping to be part way through a session of Curse of Strahd at midnight on Halloween :)
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    Absolutely we should celebrate it. Here in Scotland we can thank the early Christian saints for the introduction of the carved lamp, which has now evolved into carved pumpkin lamps. Prior to the arrival of Christianity, we marked the season by putting the heads of our defeated enemies on poles. Then the early Christians convinced us that a representation of the heads of our enemies looked just as good, and involved considerably less effort and mess. And here we are!

    (I was taught this in a course on Gaelic Culture run by the University of the Highlands and Islands, but no actual sources were cited. But I like Hallowe'en, feel that it's culturally important, and if I can think that the modern iteration is a Christian innovation, well, so much the better.)
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I find Samhain a great deal more resonant than Christmas. It is so evidently the gateway to New Year: the time of dreams and stories and incubating the things which will come to be, as the seeds and bulbs lie in the dark.

    The careless deployment of witches among a Hollywoodish hotch potch of monsters I dislike; there is too much real and dreadful history behind that.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    @ChastMastr negative reviews of current Halloween trends aren't incompatible with enjoying Halloween. I don't dislike traditional Celtic and Northern English Halloween traditions, or early 20th century interpretations - the commercialism and tackiness of the modern holiday is my problem. Halloween deserves more respect and reverence than becoming a commercial holiday gives to it - overconsumption isn't really celebration. The activities you've listed aren't part of the overconsumption fest in stores so those are not part of the problem for me.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Pomona wrote: »
    @ChastMastr negative reviews of current Halloween trends aren't incompatible with enjoying Halloween. I don't dislike traditional Celtic and Northern English Halloween traditions, or early 20th century interpretations - the commercialism and tackiness of the modern holiday is my problem. Halloween deserves more respect and reverence than becoming a commercial holiday gives to it - overconsumption isn't really celebration. The activities you've listed aren't part of the overconsumption fest in stores so those are not part of the problem for me.

    Wise words, and true of all major festivals.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited 1:47PM
    Firenze wrote: »
    I find Samhain a great deal more resonant than Christmas. It is so evidently the gateway to New Year: the time of dreams and stories and incubating the things which will come to be, as the seeds and bulbs lie in the dark.

    The careless deployment of witches among a Hollywoodish hotch potch of monsters I dislike; there is too much real and dreadful history behind that.

    This.

    Mind you, I still think The Great Pumpkin should receive more attention than His Magnificence does, at least in the UK.

    After all, veneration of The Great Pumpkin, and endeavouring to make one's pumpkin patch as sincere as possible, are no odder than some other beliefs...

    As to the history of witches and witch-fever in this country, a book well worth reading is the novel Mist Over Pendle (1951) by Robert Neill - fictional, but based on fact. M R James' chilling short story The Ash Tree also follows this theme.
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    Fall is easily my favorite season, and Thanksgiving is easily my favorite holiday (Christmas being in something of a class of its own). I really enjoy Halloween/Hallowe’en too, though I admit that like some others here, my Halloween tastes run somewhat counter to those of popular cultures. Many in our neighborhood go all out with Halloween decorations, with the result, at least in my eyes, of a yard full of Stuff, much of which is too cutesy or humorous for me, and the overall impression of which is disjointed and cluttered. There is one house with I don’t know how many skeletons, but they are all arranged as pat of an (American) football game, complete with cheerleaders and refs. I give them points for creativity, but it’s just too much to look at. I want creepy and eerie, not cute and funny.

    The front yard of the house across the street from us has once again turned into Shelob’s lair, and it is very well done. It’s just shy of the edge of too much.

    I usually wait until mid-October to start any decorating; that’s partially because I don’t want it up too early and partially to get some family birthdays out of the way. But our decorations will be fairly minimal. My favorite is the wreath of black feathers that will be hung by the door. We always have a flag flying at the house, and for the last week or two of October, it will be either the Jolly Roger or the flag associated with Blackbeard. A few other understated decorations will round things out.

    There is a pumpkin on the porch now. The jack-o-lantern won’t be carved until the 31st, but I won’t use the pumpkin for that. For years, now, I’ve carved the jack-o-lantern from a pineapple, to great effect.

    It is mandatory to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Hocus Pocus. (Yes, I know the latter at best straddles the creepy/cute fence, but what can I say. I hated the sequel, though.)


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