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Halloween and seasonal traditions
Oct. 31st, 2025 08:46 pmI'm never quite sure how we should prepare for Halloween. When I was growing up as a Baby Boomer, we often had around a hundred or so trick-or-treaters coming to our door. Sometimes our family ran short of goodies, so when I got back home with my haul, my parents would give me some of the bigger treats they still had, in exchange for a bunch of the little candies from my bag that I didn't really like anyway.
When my partner and I bought our own house in the suburbs, there weren't a lot of small children in the neighbourhood. We'd buy a few goodies, but usually we didn't hand them all out, although sometimes I'd take the remains into work so others could enjoy them. Then we had a kid of our own and she was always well supplied with stuff when she went out in our neighbourhood.
It's always a dilemma: Do you buy the kind of goodies that you yourself like, so that you have a ready supply if you don't give them out at the door? Or do you avoid temptation, buy the sort of stuff you can take or leave, and give away any extras when Halloween is over?
We went through many years of having sometimes no trick-or-treaters, sometimes only three or four, but rarely more than half a dozen. So clearly we didn't want to have 50 or 60 little chocolate bars just lying around staring at us as if to say, "C'mon, eat me - you know you want to!"
The solution we settled on was to buy a whole bunch of those little boxes of raisins. Because even if we didn't get anyone coming to our door, we could always use those raisins for baking, or on cereal, or whatever.
And of course during the days of COVID lockdowns, everyone was staying home anyway.
But then last year, we suddenly got a whole bunch of trick-or-treaters. We really struggled to do our duty to the hopeful little ghosts, goblins and wizards who appeared on our doorstep. So this year, we bought a box of 40 little packages of potato chips, in addition to the little boxes of raisins.
Halloween has been rainy this year, which no doubt has discouraged some of the young trick-or-treaters. But we still gave out 27 bags of chips. I'm confident we'll be able to use up the rest of them, as well as the raisins.
So what of other seasonal traditions?
Well, last Saturday we attended a live performance of the Rocky Horror Show at the Gladstone Theatre. That's definitely become a Halloween classic. And this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie, too.
Tomorrow evening, we'll be trotting over to our neighbourhood park for their pumpkin display, where folks in the neighbourhood bring their creatively carved jack-o-lanterns to be admired by all, before they are consigned to other uses: composting, animal feed, and so forth. It's a relatively new tradition, initiated a couple of years ago by our community association, and I'm looking forward to it.
I just finished reading a murder mystery by Faith Martin, published in 2020 but set in 1961, about someone dying during bonfire night in the UK, and the ensuing investigation where the death is found to be a murder.
One tradition I'd never heard about until a decade or two ago when someone in my Toastmasters group gave a speech about it, is Mat Night, held on October 30 in some parts of Canada and the U.S., and on other dates in other parts of the world:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/watchwords-the-night-before-halloween-used-to-be-a-mischievous-affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Night
So I guess the next few days mark various occasions ... All Saints' Day? All Souls' Day? Fall-back Day?
What occasions do you celebrate (or dread)?
When my partner and I bought our own house in the suburbs, there weren't a lot of small children in the neighbourhood. We'd buy a few goodies, but usually we didn't hand them all out, although sometimes I'd take the remains into work so others could enjoy them. Then we had a kid of our own and she was always well supplied with stuff when she went out in our neighbourhood.
It's always a dilemma: Do you buy the kind of goodies that you yourself like, so that you have a ready supply if you don't give them out at the door? Or do you avoid temptation, buy the sort of stuff you can take or leave, and give away any extras when Halloween is over?
We went through many years of having sometimes no trick-or-treaters, sometimes only three or four, but rarely more than half a dozen. So clearly we didn't want to have 50 or 60 little chocolate bars just lying around staring at us as if to say, "C'mon, eat me - you know you want to!"
The solution we settled on was to buy a whole bunch of those little boxes of raisins. Because even if we didn't get anyone coming to our door, we could always use those raisins for baking, or on cereal, or whatever.
And of course during the days of COVID lockdowns, everyone was staying home anyway.
But then last year, we suddenly got a whole bunch of trick-or-treaters. We really struggled to do our duty to the hopeful little ghosts, goblins and wizards who appeared on our doorstep. So this year, we bought a box of 40 little packages of potato chips, in addition to the little boxes of raisins.
Halloween has been rainy this year, which no doubt has discouraged some of the young trick-or-treaters. But we still gave out 27 bags of chips. I'm confident we'll be able to use up the rest of them, as well as the raisins.
So what of other seasonal traditions?
Well, last Saturday we attended a live performance of the Rocky Horror Show at the Gladstone Theatre. That's definitely become a Halloween classic. And this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie, too.
Tomorrow evening, we'll be trotting over to our neighbourhood park for their pumpkin display, where folks in the neighbourhood bring their creatively carved jack-o-lanterns to be admired by all, before they are consigned to other uses: composting, animal feed, and so forth. It's a relatively new tradition, initiated a couple of years ago by our community association, and I'm looking forward to it.
I just finished reading a murder mystery by Faith Martin, published in 2020 but set in 1961, about someone dying during bonfire night in the UK, and the ensuing investigation where the death is found to be a murder.
One tradition I'd never heard about until a decade or two ago when someone in my Toastmasters group gave a speech about it, is Mat Night, held on October 30 in some parts of Canada and the U.S., and on other dates in other parts of the world:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/watchwords-the-night-before-halloween-used-to-be-a-mischievous-affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Night
So I guess the next few days mark various occasions ... All Saints' Day? All Souls' Day? Fall-back Day?
What occasions do you celebrate (or dread)?
