I spend more money on Halloween than I do on Christmas. And every year I realize it more and more … I’m spending money on Halloween to share it all with a bunch of strangers and their children rather than on my own family and friends.

I already give lots to my family throughout the year, I don’t need a special holiday to justify those relationships. I used to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on decorations, suppers, gifts and doing things for family in or around Christmas and none of it ever made a damned difference. I still love my family but it wasn’t because of Christmas … it was because they are my family. I don’t do any of that any more and you know? I still have the same level of appreciation for my family and they do the same for me … without all the BS of Christmas fanfare.

But on Halloween, I’m giving more to random strangers I don’t even know or will probably never meet again during the year … and all just for the sake of being nice to them.

So now I find that Halloween is a more giving and fun holiday than Christmas. It’s made me realize just how wholesome Halloween is compared to the commercialized hellhole that Christmas has become.

  • ameancow@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I would also say that Halloween is the last remaining holiday that encourages and expects self-expression and artistic abilities. Making costumes, coming up with unique prop ideas, carving pumpkins, etc.

    Also, the act of trick or treating and joining halloween parties encourages socialization far, far more than other holidays which seem to just expect you to have dinner with people you don’t necessarily want to be around. The act of sending kids to knock on neighbor’s doors does more for our communities and our shared future than all the inflatable santa’s in the world.

      • ceenote@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I’m willing to let that slide for almost anyone born pre-enlightment. As long as they didn’t get super murdery over it.

        • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social
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          5 days ago

          He was by all accounts an insufferable asshole, petty, vindictive, and completely aware how fucking stupid most people are esp compared to him. And also a Biblical conspiracy theorist who was much more interested in the exact dimensions of the Old Temple than in developing Calculus.

          Also he arguably created the miraculous technological world in which we live better lives than he could have dreamed. Our debt to him can never be fully paid. His name will rightly outlive us.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caOP
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      4 days ago

      I just don’t value Christmas much any more … I do give out gifts but at this point, I just hand out money to the people I want to gift to because I never know what people want, especially kids and teens … and when you give them money, they know exactly what they want to do with it.

      Halloween however, I do spend a lot more on. And I don’t spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on big ugly props and blow up things or store bought crap … I spend quite a bit of money building up a supply of candies, chocolates and chips. I take the month leading up to the holiday and steadily buy a little bit at a time. Then by Halloween, I’ll hand out handfuls of stuff to every kid that comes to the door. This year I had 100 kids and they each got a bunch of stuff. Then I have a tradition at the end of the night of waiting as long as possible and then giving away whatever I have left to the last kid. This year, it was a couple of teen boys who looked to be about 15/16, I filled one guys bag by dumping my box of chocolates into his sack … the other kid was just messing around and didn’t even have a bag, so I gave him a supply of old pillow cases I had ready, handed him one and told him to open it up as I dumped the rest of my chocolates and chips … those were two of the happiest guys I got that night … the bonus was that I didn’t end up with all that candy that would have made me sick anyway.

  • BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Both of them are excuses to sell cheap Microplastic nowadays.

    At least Halloween isn’t being run by a huge religious cult. Imagine people getting upset about Halloween like the people that get pissed about writing X-mas. 😂

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      5 days ago

      Halloween is also a Christian holiday. Both are being run by capitalists these days.

      • BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Did you forget the huge outcry from the Christian lunatics about Halloween costumes and devil worship?

        Search online and find countless anti Halloween articles from churches and the Christian groups.

        The origins don’t matter to religious nutters.

        Xmas started out as the Winter Solstice and was co-opted by Christians.

        It’s all just consumerism now.

        • Flax@feddit.uk
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          4 days ago

          religious nutters.

          Yes. Specifically the nutters.

          Xmas started out as the Winter Solstice and was co-opted by Christians.

          No. Christmas is on the 25th of December. The Solstice is the 21st

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caOP
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      4 days ago

      Bingo! … that is why Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol as a series of ghosts that visit Scrooge … it was a tradition of story telling of retelling scary ghost stories during the longest day of the year … the moment in the year known in pagan religion as the moment in the year when the dark forces are at their strongest and highest … the winter solstice, the longest night of the year when the darkness is at its strongest … but also a moment of hope, as the light has started to return and the days grow longer.

      • bluemoon@piefed.social
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        4 days ago

        this is some form of cultural tending to fires of knowledge in eachother right here

        never forgetting where things came from

  • Zagam@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    Halloween rules. It doesn’t pretend to be about anything but fun. You dig hardcore horror? Its got you. You into pumpkin and candy corn aesthetic? Check. Sexy anything? You got it. Pink skeletons with discoball eyes? Fam, this is the holiday for you. There is no wrong way to celebrate. There’s no gate keeping here.

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    Halloween is my fav holiday. It’s just so whimsical. I wish that trick or treating was still as popular here as when I was a kid. If I can ever afford a house, I hope to be in a neighborhood that has trick or treaters

  • Flax@feddit.uk
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    5 days ago

    It’s a shame how Christmas has become a commercialised hellhole due to secularism instead of being what it originally was: a Christian holiday. It’s always more fulfilling to get back to the roots of it, many churches hold special events for it.

    Halloween is similar. Unfortunately, Protestants barely observe the religious aspect.

  • Realspecialguy@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Ok. But also, wrong…

    Bad opinion… change it.

    What are you a nazi? Communist? Why do you hate freedom so much? Do you hate Jesus? The guy so important we made the global date according to his birth?