Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

Who stopped??? Lol! Probably about 12 or 13! I stopped!

I am one of those moms who frequently costumes. And if I were to stay home all night, I would still costume. I think the kids get a kick out of it.

When my 81 year old grandmother visits for Halloween, I put devil horns on her. She's a good sport about it

Pumpkin56 wrote:When my 81 year old grandmother visits for Halloween, I put devil horns on her. She's a good sport about it

That's cool!

Quite a few of the parents were in costume last year with their ToTing kids! It's great to see the adults dressed up too!

Well my grandmother has never really witnessed the spectacle of Halloween like it is at my house. She's used to just passing out candy to TOTers--no decorations, no pumpkin (it's not that she's unfamiliar with these things, she just doesn't do them). The last Halloween I got to spend with my grandfather was actually the first Halloween he and my grandmother came to visit me. He really got a kick out of all my decorations and pumpkins. He especially liked my bleeding skull candles. He also totally annihiliated my Kit Kat supply! I'm glad I got to show him all that stuff, even if it was only once.

Pumpkin_Man wrote: This may sound stupid, but one of the things I never tried to find out about my grand parents is how they celebrated Halloween. That's really sad, but I have no idea how either my grandparents on my mothers side or my father's side celebrated the 'big day.' I don't think it really made a huge difference to them. My parents use to carve jack o'lanterns and I think there was ToTing, but I can't really swear to that, either. Both my parents were around for the Great Depression of the 30s, so there was not a lot of money to spend on any holiday, to boot.

Mike

I think my dad's parents (the ones I previously referred to) just passed out candy. I dont really think that they did any decorating. My mom's mother, however, would do a bit of decorating and a long time ago a friend of hers gave her a broom that he had built that had bicycle handle bars and a seat on it. She could be a little, ahem, rough around the edges (to put it nicely) so the gift seemed to fit

Pumpkin_Man wrote: This may sound stupid, but one of the things I never tried to find out about my grand parents is how they celebrated Halloween. That's really sad, but I have no idea how either my grandparents on my mothers side or my father's side celebrated the 'big day.' I don't think it really made a huge difference to them. My parents use to carve jack o'lanterns and I think there was ToTing, but I can't really swear to that, either. Both my parents were around for the Great Depression of the 30s, so there was not a lot of money to spend on any holiday, to boot.

Mike

My mother was born in 1914 in Arkansas, and she told me that Halloween was not celebrated there at all in her childhood. Sometimes some of the teenaged boys would play pranks, that was it.

She said the first time she ever heard about TOTing was when she lived in California in the 1930s. I have since read that CA was, indeed, the state where the custom started in the US. It spread eastward from there, but WWII interrupted the frolic. It came back in a big way with the Baby Boom.

Well, you have more recent Irish ancestry than I do, so maybe that's why your family was more into it. I have Scotch-Irish & Welsh through my mom's dad, but his family came over in the 1720s, I think, so they were a very long way removed from their British roots by the 20th century. My father's father's people were mainly English with an admixture of Irish through the women, but even they came over in the 18-teens, so they were a long way away from the Old Country, too.

My most recent ancestors were my mother's mother's people--German, but they came over in the 1860s. My German great-grandmother was an orphan, raised by nuns, so she was Catholic. But I am not aware that the Germans got into Halloween so much before the 20th century. And everyone else in my family background was Protestant, so there was probably some difference in the customs they followed, even overseas.

Here in suburban St. Louis (which is heavily Catholic, including many of Irish background), Halloween has always been - and still is - a pretty big deal. Must be why its a professional Haunted House mecca (The Darkness, Silo X, etc). Growing up in the '80's, just like it still is today, there were no modern safety-first rules against true trick r treating, everyone went out and canvased the whole neighborhood, and it was a sea of costumes, glowing decorations, and driveway fire pits (which I think is a St. Louis-thing).
I originally stopped in 7th grade - I felt like I was "too old", and instead I walked my younger sister and her friends around the nieghborhood for a couple of years. However, I never stopped loving the holiday, and decorated the entire house through my high school years, watching horror movies, carving jack o lanterns, etc.
Next on my personal halloween story comes at age 21 while I'm in college. We had a friend that found out she was going to have to take her 12 year old sister out ToTing, and we had a great idea: dress up in good enough costumes that hid our true age and go ToTing ourselves! This was Halloween 2000. There I was, a 21 yr old college junior, ToTing for a pillow case full of candy. One older gentlemen asked me (behind my elaborate grim reaper mask) how old I was, and when I replied "um, I'm a junior in high school", he replied, "A little OLD, don't you think?" HAHA, if he only knew the real truth.

These days, I have an awesome time with my wife & friends on our own driveway with our own firepit handing out candy to, by last year's count, 215 kids. Its like a Halloween street festival, and a great time. I love this holiday and always will!

Here in suburban St. Louis (which is heavily Catholic, including many of Irish background), Halloween has always been - and still is - a pretty big deal. Must be why its a professional Haunted House mecca (The Darkness, Silo X, etc). Growing up in the '80's, just like it still is today, there were no modern safety-first rules against true trick r treating, everyone went out and canvased the whole neighborhood, and it was a sea of costumes, glowing decorations, and driveway fire pits (which I think is a St. Louis-thing).
I originally stopped in 7th grade - I felt like I was "too old", and instead I walked my younger sister and her friends around the nieghborhood for a couple of years. However, I never stopped loving the holiday, and decorated the entire house through my high school years, watching horror movies, carving jack o lanterns, etc.
Next on my personal halloween story comes at age 21 while I'm in college. We had a friend that found out she was going to have to take her 12 year old sister out ToTing, and we had a great idea: dress up in good enough costumes that hid our true age and go ToTing ourselves! This was Halloween 2000. There I was, a 21 yr old college junior, ToTing for a pillow case full of candy. One older gentlemen asked me (behind my elaborate grim reaper mask) how old I was, and when I replied "um, I'm a junior in high school", he replied, "A little OLD, don't you think?" HAHA, if he only knew the real truth.

These days, I have an awesome time with my wife & friends on our own driveway with our own firepit handing out candy to, by last year's count, 215 kids. Its like a Halloween street festival, and a great time. I love this holiday and always will!

215 kids?! I am soooo jealous!