1/01/09 The Halloween Report

[Koren_nRhys]

Well, I have to say that trick-or-treating is alive and well in my town. I buy nearly $100 in candy and we get wiped out every year. Usually my kids get back from their rounds, sort out what they don't want and give it right back out. My part of town is the neighborhood where everyone else comes up to go door to door.

We have our share of city sponsored events - perhaps too many - and it is starting to show with decreased attendance from what I've seen. The weekend before Halloween was PumpkinFest - food vendors, music and parks full of scaffolding filled with carved pumpkins - close to 5000 - but it seemed less busy this year despite nicer weather than in recent years.

I don't know the answer. People just don't have, or make, the time to get to know their neighbors any more. I moved into my house 10 years ago and tried to get to know mine. We spend alot of time outside, say hi. They both built fences. Must be me.

[Arminath]

People just don't have, or make, the time to get to know their neighbors any more. I moved into my house 10 years ago and tried to get to know mine. We spend alot of time outside, say hi. They both built fences. Must be me.

You probably scared them with your friendliness. The nice guy neighbor is usually the axe murderer or the family with the cannibalistic cousin that visits every 4th of July for the 'cookout'.

[Koren_nRhys]

Who? Me? I don't even own an axe. Oh wait, yes I do. Samurai sword too...

[Mythmere]

Who? Me? I don't even own an axe. Oh wait, yes I do. Samurai sword too...

My wife has a double-bitted axe with a spike at the top. Hmm, between her liking Hellraiser and her owning an axe, I'm struck with the idea that she might be cooler than me...

[Arminath]

Who? Me? I don't even own an axe. Oh wait, yes I do. Samurai sword too...

See, you are the crazy neighbor...wait I have a small collection of old weapons too...awww crap!

My wife has a double-bitted axe with a spike at the top. Hmm, between her liking Hellraiser and her owning an axe, I'm struck with the idea that she might be cooler than me...

Didn't you know how women pick their mates? They find ones that think they're cool, but not cooler than themselves...and from the looks of it she did well!

[SonofThor]

I took my two goblins out for trick or treating downtown Madison! This was the friday before Halloween, it was a lot of fun and before I knew it, we had spent 4 hours downtown. Lars was Darth Vader and Jette was a Jack-o-lantern (I referred to her as padawan pumpkin).

We went out again, only our neighborhood was pretty dead so we went to my brother-in-law's neighborhood. They go all out there!

I don't really get the anti-Halloween/anti-Christmas thing, I've always loved both and I want my kids to have fun on those holidays as well.

[Bandigerbolls]

The neighborhood down the road has a fun tradition. Every Halloween, around 9:00 pm, they take their jack-o-lanterns to the railroad bridge and line them up for viewing. After a few ooh's and aah's and snapshots, they chuck 'em over the rail to smash on the tracks 100 feet below.

[Mythmere]

The whole dynamic of neighborhoods is weird. Literally across the street from our neighborhood (a four lane street, yes, but only a street) is a neighborhood where all the people know each other and they do things together all the time. In our neighborhood, barely anyone knows anyone else. Very strange - the value of the houses is roughly the same (theirs is slightly lower per-house price), and the racial/cultural demographics are virtually identical. Their neighborhood is also slightly older in terms of when it was built. There is nothing to explain the vast difference between the way the two places operate. Yet they are very different at a fundamental level.

[Grim]

The whole dynamic of neighborhoods is weird. Literally across the street from our neighborhood (a four lane street, yes, but only a street) is a neighborhood where all the people know each other and they do things together all the time. In our neighborhood, barely anyone knows anyone else. Very strange - the value of the houses is roughly the same (theirs is slightly lower per-house price), and the racial/cultural demographics are virtually identical. Their neighborhood is also slightly older in terms of when it was built. There is nothing to explain the vast difference between the way the two places operate. Yet they are very different at a fundamental level.

Our baby sitter 3 blocks away had over 300 trick or treaters by her estimate and we got two.

[Melan]

Shame. I'd love to do caroling at Christmas or something similar.

That's another example of something that seems to be dying out, and shouldn't. Heck, I'm Jewish and I think that Christmas Caroling is cool. While I think this whole "War on Christmas" thing is hooey, I DO think that there's a ton of collateral damage being done to neighborhood-oriented behavior by people who want to isolate their communities, people who are over-sensitive to the risk of isolating other communities, and municipal governments that rush to do things like promote town Halloween parties (or town square caroling with non-Christian music thrown in) without thinking about the fact that they're wiping out these activities at the neighborhood level.

The war on Christmas is fact: it is perpetrated on the defenceless public by unscrupulous shopping centres and other commercial venues which blast their visitors with "holiday cheer" and "Christmas music" from early November and on. Thus, not content to have turned a family holiday into a collective prostration before the idol of the demon prince Mammon (which, as an economist, I must grudgingly approve of), they also seek to dilute the spirit of Christmas into meaninglessness while lining their own pockets! If that isn't war, what could be?