Is Halloween Dying?

[MauEvig]

I think Halloween will never die, it's just too awesome to die out.
I agree with a lot of what was said here, a lot of traditions may phase out, but I think new traditions will take their place. Halloween will evolve surely, but it'll never be gone completely. It's too popular to just fizzle out.
What exactly did people do before ToT? Did they just have parties, or go around spooking people?
There are some communities that don't do Halloween as much, maybe it's because of old religious superstitions, or maybe it has to do with what Murf said, kids just grow up. But a lot of times they'll have kids of their own. Then you have people like myself who are determined to still be a kid in spirit. lol. I don't plan on having kids but if I did, I'd probably want them to enjoy all the holidays for what they were. But the closest I'll have are our cats, and I really doubt they'd want me dressing them up in costumes. Besides, they're kind of "halloween" enough already just being themselves.
As for me, I'm still going to decorate every year, regardless if I get any trick or treaters. I'll probably still want to watch some scary movies and dress up in a costume, and have a bunch of candy. Who knows, maybe I'll find a new tradition like a cool haunted house to go to, or see if there's anything I can participate in. Or just keep it simple.

Edit: I found a wiki on the practice of trick or treating. It's really fascinating! I find it humorous that kids actually had to explain to adults what Trick or Treating was!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick-or-treating
Apparently things went down hill between 1942 to 1947 due to having to have sugar rations, but I think things picked up after that. My Grandma would have been just a little girl during that time, I can't remember if she was born in 1940 or 1942...but either way she would have just been a kid at the time. She would have been somewhere between 5-7 then when things started to pick back up ToT-wise, and even then most of my family grew up in small towns, so it's hard to say how popular it was back then. Still, might be another reason why she was never all that crazy about it. She lived during a time when they still had an ice box, and remembered how wonderful it was to get a refridgerator and freezer and how they could buy ice cream and popsicles (I can't remember which, I imagine they would have bought both) when there was still a milk man, and when telephone lines were shared by party lines, and they had to go to their neighbors to watch television, I think she said her father thought TV was the devil. lol. Nowadays they think computers are.
ToT is more popular than some might think. lol. I just think the tradition of it has switched over to businesses and churches giving out candy instead of neighborhoods. If I could afford to give out the big candy bars I could probably provide some competition. Maybe I should try the spiced cider booth like others have suggested. lol. Then I'd just have to advertise that I'm giving out candy. But I'm afraid people will either think I'm creepy or weird.

[Murfreesboro]

I skimmed that Wikipedia entry you linked. Interesting stuff there.

My mother was born in 1914 in Arkansas, and she said no one had ever heard of TOTing in her childhood or youth. She said sometimes teenaged boys would play pranks around that time of year, but there was nothing ritual or organized about it.

She moved to California in the 1930s and told me she first heard of TOTing out there, so it was interesting to me to read in that Wiki article that American TOTing started in the West and moved East. That's just what my mother always said had happened. I do believe the custom took off in a big way after WWII, with the Baby Boom and all that. In my own adulthood I have seen the holiday get bigger, and I know it's because Boomers like me loved it as kids and didn't want to let go of it.

Mau, you might change your mind about having kids, but even if you don't, adults can always have fun on Halloween by throwing a costume party.

[MauEvig]

Very interesting to think about. I didn't know it was more popular in the west, and considering we grew up on the Eastern part of the US, I wonder if it's still as popular out there or not.
Still, there's plenty of people who love Halloween in different parts of the world. I've even seen it at least mentioned in a Japanese anime (Blood the last vampire that is).

I'd like to know more about what went on during the "before" times, but it sounds like Halloween wasn't so much of a holiday back then, though there were the traditions of the celts that were squashed out. It's interesting that in Europe they did have a practice of begging for food and dressing up, something similar but not quite the same. I wonder if they even had costume parties back then? They portrayed one in the Sleepy Hollow movie by Tim Burton, but not sure how "accurate" that was history wise. Sure I know there was a legend, but that's about it. I think Halloween is really popular in Salem though, and I'd like to go there one day.

lol Murf a lot of people have told me that, but I've felt this way since I was 16 and I'll be 29 in a couple days. I like kids and all, but I'm not sure if I'll ever want to be a parent myself. I'm happy being a pet parent. I agree that there's always room for Halloween fun for adults, though I prefer good clean fun myself.

[Murfreesboro]

Well, in Catholic parts of Europe, carnival was/is pretty big (think Mardi Gras), and there has always been costuming associated with that.

A couple of years ago I checked some books out of the public library here that addressed Halloween in the late 19th/early 20th century. Back then, I do think they often celebrated it in the East, but not with TOT. It was more about costume parties, lit pumpkins, and games like bobbing for apples. People would send each other whimsical cards, too. which are worth some money nowadays if you can find an authentic one. I have to believe it was celebrated in some fashion up in the Northeast, where there were so many Irish immigrants. The American South didn't have many Irish in those days--we were more likely to have Scotch-Irish (Protestants) who had come over during Colonial times.

[MauEvig]

Come to think of it Murf, there do seem to be a good deal amount of Irish folks in Upstate New York. In fact, they made a really big deal of St Patty's day and threw a parade each year. I've only ever really seen the after math of the parade where people were walking away from it when they were done and I was still at work. I myself have a wee bit of Irish on my mother's side. I'm not sure about my dad's side, but my grandfather was a red head, so I suspect there may have been some.

So it's quite possible they did Halloween related stuff in New York. I'm not sure about the South like Virginia.

[Murfreesboro]

One of those old History Channel specials, The Haunted History of Halloween, reports that during colonial times, Virginia did more to celebrate Halloween than Massachusetts did. Back then, the Puritan influence was still so strong in New England that they wouldn't celebrate anything suggesting Catholicism, and of course Halloween is part of "Hallowmas" in the Catholic church. But Virginia, being predominantly Anglican (Episcopal), did have a watered-down version of Hallowmas. (As I've said elsewhere, I was raised Episcopalian, so I can testify that that church does observe most of the feasts & saints' days celebrated by the Catholics, but we never prayed to the saints). Anyway, according to the History Channel, it was a time of year when Virginians would have parties and tell ghost stories. I'm not sure they costumed, though.

My mother's family, at least on her dad's side, is Scotch-Irish and Welsh. They have a lot of redheads. I think the Scots can be redheaded just as much as the Irish can. And the Scotch-Irish were mainly Presbyterian, which is why the English sent them to colonize northern Ireland centuries ago. (There were Catholic Scots, too, in the highlands, but those were not the ones who were friendly to the English. In fact, they rebelled against England in 1745 when they were supporting "Bonnie Prince Charlie's" claim to the English throne. The "Young Pretender" was the grandson of King James II, who had been ousted from power when he had a son with his second, Catholic wife.)

Here in the South, we never have St. Patrick's Day parades, and have only fairly recently begun observing that holiday at all (with a lot of drinking and partying, sort of the same way people who are not Mexican celebrate Cinco de Mayo, just another excuse to party hard). The heavy concentration of Irish Catholics pretty much stayed in the North, I think. Which is a round-about way of saying that I don't think the South knew much about Halloween, either, before WWII. Our Scotch-Irish population tends to be among our oldest settlers, the ones who settled Appalachia, etc. They are at the root of our "country music" tradition, which of course includes a lot more than what we think of as country music today. Bluegrass, Sacred Harp, folk music of various types.

[tantraman]

Here in Austin Texas there are halloween firework shows and big concerts. People love it here Halloween is pretty strong in the southwest

[Murfreesboro]

Austin is a great town year-round.

[Kolchak]

Murph I gotta correct you in one area. Despite me being a Georgia boy through and through AND having a Irish Catholic background, I didn't find out until I was in my early 20s that the second biggest Saint Patricks day Parade is in none other than Savannah, Georgia.

In terms of size of the parade, only New York City is bigger. Savannah is even bigger than Boston and Chicago. The population of the area goes up by close to 80,000.

Of course we are Southrons, and must do things our own way. So in addition to green beer, we have green grits.

Don't feel bad not knowing, I was shocked to find out myself, some 30 plus years ago.

In that respect Georgia is like Tennessee. People in Atlanta don't have a clue what people in Savannah are doing just like folks in Memphis don't know what's going on in Chattanooga.

[Murfreesboro]

Well, I stand corrected, Kolchak. So does Savannah have a large Irish population, and if so, when did they arrive there? (And is Halloween big in Savannah?) And how long has the parade been going on?

Not only does Memphis not know what Chattanooga is doing; I don't think Memphis knows what Nashville is doing, & vice versa. Those three stars on the TN state flag stand for the three sections of TN--west, middle, and east, and each one has its capital--Memphis in the west, Nashville in the middle, Knoxville in the east. None of those cities has much use for either of the others, and I think the rivalry between Nashville & Memphis is particularly acute.

[Kolchak]

The first Catholics to arrive in Georgia to establish the church that is the center of Saint Patricks day celebration were actually French, who showed up around 1770. They started the first permanent Catholic church in Savannah, that still stands today, called Congregation de Saint Jean-Baptiste.(Congregation of Saint John the Baptist)

Over the years it was moved and enlarged to become a Cathedral around 1850, but dept, fire, a hurricane and more stuff kept it from becoming consecrated until 1920. It has been renovated several times over the years as additions to the Cathedral and grounds have taken place.

The Cathedral is the central location for the Saint Patricks day celebration and has been since the end of WWII.

When Oglethorpe founded the colony of Savannah, about 15% of the new colony were Irish Catholic. Not to be confused with Scots-Irish who were Church of England. Dublin, Georgia which is in middle south Georgia was founded by Irish Catholics and there is a corridor that runs from Dublin to Savannah that still has a large Irish surname population, although many have converted to Protestantism through intermarriage. In that respect Margaret Mitchell got it right when she wrote about the Irish in the South during the Civil War in Gone With the Wind.

Of course these days anybody and everybody claims to be Irish on Saint Patricks day and in Savannahs case due to location and nice weather, people come from all over to enjoy it.

[Murfreesboro]

Thanks for that brief history! You know, I had always wondered about the Irish Catholic O'Hara family in GWTW. It didn't square with what I knew about "my" part of the South.

Your explanation also helps explain a catalog I often receive from some place in north Georgia, a little import shop that specializes in German imports (I guess I get it because I subscribed for several years to a magazine called German Life, when my older boy was studying German and going overseas to study). The back part of that catalog is filled with Irish imports. I had always thought it was a little odd, pairing Irish with German like that.