Aspies VS Halloween

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Animal abuse? Violent crimes?

It may differ between countries but in mine that's what happens. People where i live throw fireworks/bangers at animals or insert them in the animals orifices. Rape, assault, breaking and entering, destruction of property, they all increases in statistics at halloween.

Halloween iconography really freaks me out.

Welcome to WP, glitzgirlsmom! I sympathize with your daughter about the discomfort of many cool costumes and some of the sensory stuff associated with various holidays. I'm sorry she got bullied. What a stupid reason!

eric76, I've heard of black cats being a particular target on Halloween, as though their supposed association with so-called witches makes it acceptable on that particular night. People who are smart keep their cats in general, but especially the black ones, in the house on Halloween.

Tonight's the night, but our scarecrow blew down on Monday and is still damp and in a bit of a mess. I'll need to dismantle him and let him dry out. We have no other decorations up this year. Every year, holidays seem to creep up on us faster and faster (no pun intended for this particular occasion). My girlfriend finally bought a pumpkin on the weekend, but she's been too tired or forgotten to carve it each night since. Maybe she'll do it tonight. I've moved it to where she'll be more likely to see it when she gets home. But a freshly carved pumkin on Halloween misses most of the month and leaves it to be out in November, after the mood has changed.

We don't expect trick-or-treaters here. We're often not even home, because we've been out to help others we know to scare the kids, but there just aren't that many kids near us who are of the right age, and the houses are too far apart for easy trick-or-treating up and down the road anyway. I don't know what we'll do tonight, except stay home and hang out. If anyone comes to the door, we always have a little chocolate around, so we'll give them some. But, if we don't turn on our porch light, they won't assume we're inviting them to come, so we could just leave it off.

The party on Saturday was both fun and "too much", just as pretty much anything with other people can be. But my costume was nice and comfy, and people loved the mad scientist / lab rat combo my girlfriend and I went as. She even made me a name tag, with a name I decided on, that said,

Deranged Employee of the Month
Dr. Fritz Schmerzkopf
Radical GMO Laboratories, Unlimited
We take chances!
Custom creations our specialty!

Halloween is my absolute FAVORITE holiday. I trick-or-treated well into my teens until one of the people in the households giving out candy was jerky enough to say "it wasn't right" for me to be doing it (I nearly TP-ed his house, my friends talked me out of it).

Horror movies (especially zombie movies) are one of my obsessions. Don't ask me why I love them--they just make me smile (been watching Tales from the Crypt since age 6). But my favorite thing are the pumpkins. I love pumpkin flavored foods! Pumpkin coffee, pumpkin bread, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin yogurt I really like carving pumpkins. It's been a thing with me since I was little. My favorite part is scooping out the gooey innards and smelling the pumpkin (I had little interest in actually carving the thing). I would have full-on meltdowns from age 3 to 15 if my parents took away my pumpkin scraps or worse still, hollowed out the pumpkin for me as a "favor"!

I'm not so sure about costume parties, as any type of party is exhausting for me nowadays, but I never turn down a chance to dress up as something terrifying. I routinely scare other girls at University with my zombie costumes. Halloween is a great holiday.

I grew up to hate it (I don't answer the door). Seeing it as just another pointless, money wasting day. The fireworks P*** me off, and hearing about animals being harmed around this time.

Just my opinion, don't shoot me.

CosmicCastaway, you should come to our house and hollow out our pumpkins next year. Then my girlfriend and I could each design our jack-o-lantern faces, and my girlfriend could cut them out. She never seems to mind cutting out what I design, which is super hard for me, but she doesn't want to gut my pumpkin for me and still hasn't gotten around to doing the one she bought for herself this year. Maybe, if someone gutted it for her, she'd go ahead and finish the job. I hate scraping out pumpkins. I'd love it if someone did me that favor. This year, I didn't even bother to buy a pumpkin, it got so late, and I was so unenthusiastic. But I do love to design the face and see the carved result, especially when it gets lit up with the candle inside.

I stopped dressing up for Halloween in my early teens

Halloween is on the same day as the last harvest festival of the pagan calander. In prechristian times, (and even after Christianity too) they held festivals at certain times of the year to celebrate the cycles of the earth or to pray for fertility for their crops and aminals and themselves, and to give thanks for the harvest. There are three fertility festivals and three harvest festivals. The other two were the summer and winter solstices.

Halloween became associated with death to the early pagans because it was the time of the year that the plants and trees were "dying" and it was getting darker and colder and less active. Naturally, when people thought of the death of the year and death of the plants, they would think of their relatives that had died. It became associated with honoring the dead as well. Some honored the dead persons memory, while others honored the dead persons actual spirit.

There are many different types of paganism and many different beliefs within them, and many different older names for Halloween, but the most well known seems to be Samhain, which is a Celtic name for it.

Because early Christianity taught that all other religions were evil and any other deity that was worshipped was actually the devil, the pagans nature and cycle based festivals were seen as them worshipping the devil in certain forms or certain aspects of him. Samhain was seen as pagans worshipping the dead and the spirits of the dead were seen as demons from hell. It got it's "spooky" and "evil" reputation that way.

As the Chruch grew and spread across Europe and Britain, more and more people converted. The priests were concerned that the new Christians were still celebrating during the times they used to celebrate their festivals and so they would move or assign a Christian holiday on or near the time of the festival so the people could still celebrate somewhat like they used to and when they used to, but they could do so without violating the beliefs of the Christian faith. The Church assigned All Souls and All Saints to Samhain because praying for the souls of the faithful departed and honoring the saints could be seen as somewhat of a similar theme to some of the pagans Samhain celebrations. They didn't "steal" the holiday, they simply put theres there as well.

Modern protestant evangelical fundamentalists who believe very strongly in a literal interpretation of the bible and all aspects of their faith, believe also that Halloween must be evil because of where it came from. They believe that the Catholic practice of praying for the souls of the dead, the practice of intercessory prayer to saints, and anything other than a soul going directly to heaven or hell immediately upon death is an evil belief that is sent by the devil to trick you out of your soul. Therefore, they would naturally see Halloween as inherintly evil.

That's pretty much why people associate it with evil and the devil and spookiness nowdays.

Old thread but I had to comment! I don't really do the church thing, grew out of trick or treating and find it horrible that people these days ruined it because they have to do stupid crap. I had two last year and I couldn't give those poor kids candy because I hadn't bought any, not expecting anyone to come.

Never been to a party but I did try to have myself committed to a mental hospital twice and still have the uniforms they gave me and the socks, got yellow ones the first time and green ones the second. Who knows what I'll do with them but I felt like I needed to keep them.