AIBU to find this halloe’en display’ offensive?

paddyann54

Halloween has been celebrated here in Scotland and Ireland for centuries it’s certainly NOT an American import .We have a lot of children who come to our door every year sing a wee song or tell a joke do a dance or tell a story and be rewarded with a goody bag with nuts and apples and sweets and a 50p piece .Trick or treating may be American but this old fashioned guiding is how it’s still done here.I make up 30 bags in advance and often need more and we enjoy every minute of it ,some of the wee tinies are hilarious.

Agreed it’s not an American import, but we have certainly copied their over the top costumes etc. We always had a bit of fun on Halloween, cutting holes in old sheets or towels to scare your friends etc, apple bobbing and other harmless and FREE things to entertain children. The over the top outfits for sale now is a custom imported from the US.

Midnightblue

Actually I don’t think I am being.
I am pretty relaxed about Hallo’e’en generally, and I am not easily shocked, but I have noticed it’s become more and more focused on violence these past few years, not only by teenagers, but by some parents of young children.

I’ve just walked past a house where the owners have put a ‘scarecrow’, dressed in full hazmat suit, performing a ‘post mortem’ on another scarecrow lying on a table, which is covered by a blood stained sheet. The owners of the property have taken up some flags from their garden and dug a ‘grave’.

Hanging upside down either side of their front door are 2 full size human shaped objects, tightly wrapped in black plastic.

I know it’s on their property, but it is put up for public consumption, otherwise they’d have set it up in their own living room.

TBH, I feel a bit upset, (to my own surprise) that anyone would think it’s ok to think up, find it funny, and display this. If I had children to care for, I wouldn’t walk them past.

Just interested to see what other grans think

Utterly gross. I’m with you 100%. I thought it was actually supposed to be for children’s entertainment; this clearly isn’t and I’d be surprised if they don’t get complaints. Anyway, isn’t it supposed to be about ghosts and ghouls, not murder and destruction 🙄. It annoys me that yet again we are following the US customs. It was hardly a ‘thing’ when we were young and now it’s just a huge money spinner.

MissInterpreted

It wouldn't bother me at all, to be honest - but I can see why some people would get offended by it.

It wouldn’t bother me either, however I can also see why parents wouldn’t have wanted their young children to see it.

Halloween should be fun and us adults who like blood and gore (in a movie type way) have lots of films to feast on over Halloween

Commercial trash as far as I’m concerned.

Sounds ghastly.

For me, it has just become another commercialised enterprise to flog stuff and make money.

If Halloween is to be come a celebration where bodies and skeletons are hanging everywhere it’s a big step backwards, it’s supposed to be fun not gruesom

Dreadful, what kind if twisted minds put objects like that in their front gardens ?
Some of the houses on our estate look like a horror film set and all made from plastic no doubt 🙄

Absolutely horrible the black bags thing!

Hallowe’en was low key back when I was a child, chasing each other dressed in a sheet and pretending to be scared. Bobbing for apples, and I think I remember a cardboard witches hat and mask. The jack o’ lantern was in a swede, no pumpkins around then.
No trick or treating either.

It seems to be the thing round here now, that if you welcome trick or treaters, you put a lit pumpkin outside your door, or in your window. I don’t mind the kids coming round, but since I can’t be bothered doing a pumpkin, I don’t get any.

It’s the commercialisation of Hallowe’en that’s come from America, not the tradition itself.

It’s horrible that plastic wrapped figures seem to have become a ‘thing’.

Awful don’t like Halloween at all.

Thankyou Damask Rose
I am very disturbed at the level of violence on our society. Our country's children deserve so much more. Instead of Halloween why not celebrate light , love and nature?

I wouldnt be walking kids past either.

I know of a household[not in this country], who think it is great fun to scare their young[about 5 years old] grandchildren. They find it hilarious.

Tizliz

This was posted on our local FB page, not sure about it 🤫

PMSL 😂

I used to give sweets out but since it’s got so gruesome and plain nasty I no longer answer the door

Guising

Halloween has been celebrated here in Scotland and Ireland for centuries it’s certainly NOT an American import .We have a lot of children who come to our door every year sing a wee song or tell a joke do a dance or tell a story and be rewarded with a goody bag with nuts and apples and sweets and a 50p piece .Trick or treating may be American but this old fashioned guiding is how it’s still done here.I make up 30 bags in advance and often need more and we enjoy every minute of it ,some of the wee tinies are hilarious.

Arewethereyet precisely

Tizliz

This was posted on our local FB page, not sure about it 🤫

I think it's funny too. As M0nica says, so long as no one takes it seriously. There was a time when I wouldn't even have considered that anyone would take it seriously...

Tizliz

This was posted on our local FB page, not sure about it 🤫

Surely just a joke of the ‘black comedy’ variety?
I was guilty last year of buying a plastic skeleton - an enormous ‘spider’ one, which is daft anyway, since spiders don’t have skeletons.
The Gdcs loved it, anyway. I dare say it’ll be decorating their front garden again this year.

Tizliz

This was posted on our local FB page, not sure about it 🤫

I think this is hilarious, as long as no one takes it seriously!!

It sounds horrible and distasteful. I hate horror, I cannot watch horror films. I think, like porn, this extreme violence comes form the availability of really vile torture and horror films online.

But what has amazed me this year is Hallowe'en decorations going up on the outside of houses and on fences and walls, weeks before halloween. Some have been up for a week or more.

I went past one house this week where the outside decorations, entirely decorous, spiders webs, big enough to be made from rope and extend from bedroom windows to garden, pumpkins and lights, must have cost £00s and up a good two weeks in advance. They will no doubt come down and be immediately replaced by Christmas decorations - which will also have cost £00s.

It does sound particularly gruesome, OP. Whatever happened to good old ghosts, bats and witches?

This was posted on our local FB page, not sure about it 🤫

I knew a woman who was an educational psychologist and she was determined that her son (who was the same age as my daughter) would not be allowed anything violent, no toy guns, nothing like that. Imagine her horror when she saw him running around my friend's garden chasing her daughter and mine with a stick and pretending to shoot them with it!