I suspect that if any person living in the USA ever finds this blog they may well find what I’m going to say totally bonkers – however before  getting bogged down in stereotypes I searched Why I Hate Halloween (my favourite was the Epic Rant on the Philadelphia website) and you know what not everyone in the US loves Halloween either.   I really have no idea as to why we should now get all excited about halloween apart from one reason – making money for the shops and importers of cheap rubbish from China.

Take a walk around any supermarket and you quickly see that there are all sorts of Halloween promotions – yet another chance to purchase tat for your little precious.  Then of course are all those pumpkins which up until recently was some exotic fruit mentioned on American TV.  Now we have fields of the bloody things which only goes to prove how commercial and pointless the whole thing is becoming.  We don’t see pumpkins in the shops at any other time of the year.

I guess this is a generational thing, and I don’t between me and the younger generation but between the twenty somethings and the youngsters.  When my son was at school halloween wasn’t really mentioned and there certainly wasn’t any trick or treat.  However, by the turn of the century Trick or Treat was becoming a real social menace – making many elderly people dread the night.   The calls to the police would go through the roof from people complaining of unruly kids.  Such a wonderful festival.

So what did happen around the change of the century to create this multi headed beast?  Maybe we took another trend from the States, although the original idea originally came from these shores so perhaps we have only ourselves to blame.  However, there does seem to be one other suspect in this sorry tale – JK Rowling.  I have no evidence for this but the Harry Potter books became a phenomenal success  at this time and maybe they were used as a way to get kids to read at school – which is great but did it also encourage the up take of Halloween?   I don’t know but  this is when Halloween became a real pain – especially Trick or Treat

So I am a grumpy old man about this.  I hate halloween.  It is totally foreign to me and I hate the thought of buying junk that will never be used again.   I think the way I feel about this sorry mess is best expressed by this photo floating around Facebook …

Enjoy