Aspies VS Halloween

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I like the time of year. Halloween, I could do with or without. When I was little, I enjoyed trick-or-treating, because it was the one time of year that I got free candy I might dress up this year and go to a dance that a group at our school's hosting, although I'm not very big on the kind of partying that involves people getting drunk and voluntarily sacrificing their self-control.

I find halloween sad actually. Back when I was a kid we use to actually go trick or treating. Though I usually always went alone in my neighborhood there was a time or two I managed to go with a couple of the neighborhood kids. I wasn't the most sociable child but as I've said on here before to those that reach out to me I tend to open up to them and there were people through out my life that did reach out.

Now a days kids hardly trick or treat anymore because people have to be evil and poison the candy or my god put razors in the apples so now they just go to church parties. To me thats not what halloween is supposed to be. It kills the point to decorate, buy candy, kills the point to do anything for it really, you just send your kids to the church parties.

As far as being an adult I would love to give out candy if the traditions were still the same, I don't do parties. I just sit at home and watch the AMC movies mostly.

Like most official holidays it seems to sneak up on me, I usually have trouble planning a costume. I help at the church's "trunk-or-treat" which keeps me from having to answer all the TOT-ers and shush the dogs if I was at home.

Last year I discovered one of the BEST times ever to shop. While everyone is caught up in the motions, they leave the stores virtually empty. It's like going to Disneyland and getting to the rides quicker while everyone is watching a parade

First off, Halloween isn't about a paranormal event. It's a modern derivation of an old Pagan holiday, Samhain (Sou-ween). Samhain is the third harvest festival of the Pagan year. In some Pagan religions, the holidays celebrate events in the God and Goddess's lives. At Samhain, the God dies, only to be born again to the Goddess on Winter Solstice. It isn't literal, it's figurative. It represents the cycle of the earth.

Samhain is a time to reflect on the past year, honor relatives and friends who have died, and prepare for winter and the "death" of the plants, earth, etc. It's also believed by many to be the time of the year when the veil between the worlds of life and death is very thin and spirits are able to pass through to the living side easily.

Because of this association with death, modern culture has turned it into something scary. It did not start out that way.

The other Pagan holidays during the year are Lammas (Feb 2), Ostara (Spring Equinox), Beltane (April 30), Summer Solstice, Lughnassadh (August 2nd), Mabon (Fall Equinox), Samhain (October 31st), Winter Solstice.

I have a phobia of clowns, masks, and anyone in a costume where I can't see their face. If I can avoid that, it's fine. I have two little boys and I enjoy seeing them dress up and get candy. Nothing about it really bothers me except some of the costumes. I usually don't dress up because I can never find a costume I like. The commercially made ones are made from this odd cheap material that drives me nuts and they never fit right. If I had the time and ability to make my own, I would.

I love Halloween. I love the decorations. The costumes and I love to dress up and pass out candy (if we get trick o treaters). I have gone to Halloween parties one of my autism groups would hold.

I am hoping we will get some this year but we live on a busy street and our house is hidden behind bushes so it's hard to see the home. I may put up a sign on our mailbox to attract them. But if we don't get any, at least I have all the candy. Maybe next year or after, our son be old enough to trick o treat and I want to try and take him. I hope it's still around because it seems to be phasing out slowly and I hardly see any these days.

The reality is that it is quite rare for people to put things in the candy.

I did a search through the medical journals a few years ago and finally found precisely one mention in a journal on toxicology. And that mention was so non-specific that it may have been easily the same hysteria as is spread in the news.

The only real cases that we could find had to do with parents doing it to their own kids.

I don't like Halloween, never have, even when I was a child. I do, however, have a major sweet tooth so I love the candy that goes with it!

I LOVE Halloween.

I LOVE Halloween! It's one of the only days out of the entire year that the outcasts and pillars of society alike seem to be able to put their differences aside and congregate on peaceful terms. It's one of the few times that I don't feel so abnormal and sensory issues seem to disappear. I like the costumes, decorations and activities (because I can use them to express myself in a way that's (at that moment) is socially acceptable). With the exception of taffy, chocolate and gum, I'm not much for candy but I do like sharing with others. I'm also a bit of an "adrenaline junkie" so I do enjoy the occasional scare. My view of Halloween (and most other holidays) is more akin with their Pagan origins than the mainstream ideals. I see it/them as a celebration and a time to reflect; it's not about the parties, candy, gifts, etc. they're just a bonus. I'm not into them for the physical aspects they've come to be known by but for the psychological affect(s) they have on me. I know that some people loathe holidays in general but I quite enjoy them.

In Britain nobody bothers with Halloween, the shops sell masks but its not a big event over here.

When I was a kid, my parents handed out little toy cars and rubber bugs/snakes/monsters that my father picked out at the store. Ours was a very popular stop on the trick-or-treating rout as a result. Nobody else did it that way, so we were special. My father used to love dressing up in the bat costume my mother made for him, playing his home-made sound effects tape, and turning on the colored bulbs in the lamps to make it look dim and spooky.

I enjoyed helping to scare kids at a friend's house in past years. We even made one girl shriek and run down the street, forgetting that her mother was waiting in the car at the curb. Also, a lady once said we'd "scared the fat off" her. She was laughing, so it was pretty funny. I liked to pretend I was a fake figure - scare crow or monster - propped up in a chair to hold the candy bowl on the porch. I'd wait until they had their candy securely in their bags, so they wouldn't miss out or drop it, then I'd jump up and make a scary noise, pretending I was going to reach out and grab or chase them. We got a reputation. The kids loved going to that house. But those friends have since moved.

Costumes can be inconvenient if poorly chosen, but I've done some fun ones. This year, however, there have been a couple hitches, so the complication has added to the stress of my life. It's been getting more like that in recent years, so my enthusiasm has waned. My girlfriend and I go to a party each year, so I feel like I can't just be scary and pop out at kids. I have to be creative and different each year. I like being creative, but I'm spending a little too much money on it when I'm trying to be careful about my budget, and fixing the problem is a hassle. We're going as a matched set this year, though, so that makes it more worthwhile. I'll be a mad scientist. She'll be my lab rat. It's like the year I told my friend with a bad back to wrap up in sheets and blankets, carry a pillow, and go as an unmade bed - a costume I'd done before, having heard about it from my sister. Well, he did it, and his wife decided to match by wearing a bathrobe and pajamas, messing up her hair, and using make-up to put dark circles under her eyes. She was a restless night's sleep.

My girlfriend loves to carve a pumpkin, and we like picking our pumpkins out together. For me, though, gutting pumpkins is chilly and uncomfortable, what with the slime. Carving is hard, because I don't have strong hands. It's not so much fun for my girlfriend if she has to help me, as well as do her own. So, I do my best. But I like designing the face and lighting a candle in the resulting jack-o-lantern.

The time of year is pretty, and I've always loved it, in spite of it being the precursor to the cold of winter and a time when I have to adjust to a temperature change, which is always hard. At least the summer's brutal heat is gone.

Oh, btw, the god actually dies in August, "going to seed". It's a grain thing then. Autumn is the time of year for final harvest, when that which will be saved is stored up and that which won't keep or is overabundant is eaten. The harvest is of apples and the like, which come in at this time of year. Also, animals are either slaughtered and their meat preserved or their pens and feed are prepared if they are meant to survive the winter. That's part of the death aspect, along with the harvest, so it's also a feast time. The animals that are kept over the winter are the cause of the February celebration, as the lactating of the ewes, in response to having given birth, is celebrated. Unlike the solstices and equinoxes, these and the May celebration were the original Celtic festivals, and they were celebrated when the appropriate events took place, not on the same specific days each year. In other words, you'd celebrate the lactation of the ewes when they actually started lactating, not because a date on the calendar had arrived. Remember also, this had to do with the climate in that part of the world, not with what might make sense in one part or another of some other culture's land, with that climate dictating events.

Life and death were not always considered so distinct to earlier cultures. they dealt with both all the time. We have it pretty cushy in modern times and places. It makes it easy to forget where things came from. For another example: clowns. They're not an outgrowth of court jesters, as many people think. They come from rather nasty spirits in Germanic culture. So, if you're afraid of clowns, who can blame you?

As I got older, I started to dislike getting dressed for Halloween, as I became more self-conscious. However, I enjoyed it at the time.

Me too. Plus, it's fun to escape into your costume.

I like the candy...I used to like carving pumpkins when I was a kid, but I haven't done that in a while.

I liked it more as a kid though when there was trick-or-treating and and costumes pumpkin carving etc. I never had sensory issues with the costumes.

I love the Simpsons Halloween specials and the Nightmare Before Christmas and Edgar Allen Poe poems read on Halloween. I like the idea of dressing up in costumes bcs I love daydreaming and imagination but dressing up and going to a Halloween party is no fun...It's just a party like any other (noisy, crowded, small talk, bad music etc) except people are wearing costumes.