Feel like an old fogey.

@craftcat - surely you aren’t suggesting those activities for this year? I felt I’d strayed into an alternate universe where Covid-19 hadn’t materialised!

In the 80s two local boys decided to go trick or treating. Our living room was on the first floor and OH called down that there was no one in. They said “OK” and walked off.

Our neighbour, who fell out with anyone and everyone, shouted abuse at them and they threw raw eggs at her car. It caused a really sticky mess and was a nightmare to clean. The local beat bobby had words with them and it didn’t happen again.

If the lady with the Hallowe'en has only been in the country for a year, she may be in blissful ignorance that it isn't celebrated where you are.
I must say, I am surprised if it isn't as in neighbouring Netherlands it is quite a big thing and in fact my friend's daughter has made a business out of it !
In the UK, the general move is towards going on a pumpkin walk , with either sweets left outside the house for help yourself or the parents with the children giving them sweets when they spot a pumpkin!
Flour bombs etc are frowned upon and seen as an assault!
Suggest that you just make sure that you stick to the rules and let others get on with it ! After all, you can't always fix stupid!

I am absolutely fed up of people flouting the rules. I worked for 40 years as qualified nurse and I get daily messages from present friends that are still working as they are TERRIFIED to go into work to nurse patients with the virus. They are physically and mentally in the pits at the moment and then you get idiots that think they no better who end up expecting these hard working and courageous people to care for them. They are not asking for much just ease dont go out unless it is necessary and stupid ideas like this are not necessary. Im unable to return due to health problems, but am made to feel guilty for not. I have also lost family and friends to this virus and im sure at this rate I will loose more. This woman is disrespectful to others and self centred. Im sorry for rant, but I really don't want to loose any one else and I miss my grandchildren so much.

You 'certainly don't need to feel like the Grinch.

You have tried to make this woman understand that the American way of celebrating Halloween is unknown in Belgium, as it is in all other European countries.

You have also pointed out that the restrictions regarding Covid19 actually prevent her going out in this manner.

She has chosen not to listen, so I hope someone does report her to the authorities for harrassing them and endangering their health!

Thanks folks, I went to a co-working meet up in a local Hotel this morning with some of the Ladies, it was great and very safe. I am learning how to do online conferences etc and they have been a great help.
Alexa it is a private FB group.

Jillybird, Hallowe’en is actually Irish. It was a festival on the eve of All Saints. Irish Christianity still has a lot of Pagan influences and the dead were believed to be allowed to walk on this night. I think the dressing up as ghosts etc was to scare the spirits away. Irish emigrants took the tradition to America which started the Trick & Treat practice. Pumpkins were unknown in Ireland when I was little. We used turnips (swedes) to make lanterns.

There’s good and bad in all countries.

Here Halloween is great fun with local children beautifully costumed calling for treats, the younger ones accompanied by their parents. Not sure what will happen this year. I've thought about putting some treats on a table in the front drive so no one has to get too close. No one throws flour or water bombs, or eggs, not acceptable in my book.

If I heard anyone planning to throw flour paste on other people's property I'd have something to say no matter which country it was. Always some vandals looking for excuses.

I think for any action to be taken the said behaviour would have to be witnessed. Preferably by more than one person who can testify that the woman knew that what she was doing was wrong/criminal damage

Let her get on with it. She sounds quite selfish so steer clear of her.

I’ve never heard of a tradition of throwing flour bombs,certainly not here in Canada. It’s always lots of fun for the kids to go trick or treating just not this year ?

It doesn’t exactly put us Brits in a good light with the Belgian host community does it? I think you are quite right to express forcefully the stupidity of her ideas. Most of Europe does not celebrate Halloween in the way the UK has imported from the US and would likely be very offended by this kind of behaviour, even without Covid. Maybe point out that she and her child, not to mention the rest of you expats will have to live with the fallout from her “little bit of fun” long after this one evening of stupidity is over. You are in their country and have to act accordingly.
Regarding tactful compromises in the light of Covid restrictions, what is wrong with setting up a Zoom group (I even know people in their late 80s who use Zoom regularly) and have virtual social gatherings, quiz nights and the like? Get creative and constructive

Flour bombs are a complete no no. My mother had one thrown at her on bonfire night and it ruined her skirt, she was never able to wash out the stain Properly.

I'm in Ireland and Halloween has a long tradition here, but recently taken over by the American version. When I was a child, we dressed up and called on neighbours saying "Help the halloween party". We would be given fruit or nuts, occasionally money but not usually sweets. Then we would go home and play games like bobbing for apples and eat halloween brack - a kind of fruit bread - with a ring in it. Whoever go the ring was supposed to be married within the year!

In recent years, where I live, groups of children go around with their parents and call on people they know. They're often invited in, children given some sweets (these days they wouldn't thank you for fruit or nuts!). The adults might even be offered a glass of wine, and it's very sociable. However, this year that won't be happening, but I'm trying to think of some outdoor fun to entertain neighbours children - maybe a spooky treasure hunt.

Back to OP - definitely don't feel like a Grinch!

Many years ago I worked for a firm who sent people overseas and usually sent them on a course to learn about the country and its culture before they went. One posting was a disaster and in the post mortem someone said 'but he had done the course', to which another manager replied you could brief X on the culture of another country 24 hours a day for a month and he would still be none the wiser

Felice this sounds like the young woman you describe. Leave her and let her learn the hard way, when someone flour-bombed calls the police and she spends an uncomfortable 24 hours in the custody of the anti-terrorism police. It will be no less than she will have earned - and she might, just might, learn something.

Exactly Whingingmum.

You did the right thing in pointing out what she was proposing to do was wrong. I would take no further action.

I would be throughly p'd off if someone flour and water bombed my house.

Jillybird, This modern version of Halloween does seem to be an American import but Halloween has always been celebrated in Ireland- All Hallow's Eve. As a child in N.ireland in the 1950s we did apple dunking, had traditional Halloween foods,boxty, barn brack and apple tarts with charms in. In the countryside young men did go out and about playing tricks on neighbours and we had fireworks. No doubt the tradition went to America from Ireland and Scotland, they 'modernised ' it to trick n'treating and we imported it back.

Felice... perhaps you should have started this post by explaining where you live and that this is not part of your countries culture ? That would have stopped people thinking you’re just a moaning Minnie ?

Halloween originated in the Celtic festival of Samhain. Both Scotland and Ireland have a long history of celebrating Samhain with children having to entertain to receive a reward.
I have no idea why this celebration mutated in the USA to trick or treat, with the implied threat, but this bastardisation of tradition made it’s way back to the U.K. in recent years and has unfortunately supplanted our tradition.

There's always been Hallowe'en in my family, and where I was at school on the Wirral. It meant doing fun things with apples with your hands tied up – ducking for them in a bowl of water with a fork held in your mouth, or bobbing for them as they dangle from a string. Oh, and turnip lanterns, which were smaller and harder work than pumpkins but somehow more satisfying. There was a Canadian family nearby and I remember going there for Hallowe'en and making taffy, a north American confection that involves stretching a sugar and glyceribe mixture over and over (so a bit like seaside rock only not hard. I enjoyed that, you got the sweeties in the end but you had to work hard for them.

In Scotland the tradition of guising at Samhain remains – children dress up (using imagination and materials found around the home, not mass-produced plastic in orange and black) – and went from house/farm to house/farm looking for goodies – not necessarily big-name sweeties but tablet, cake or fruit. That tradition goes back much further than American trick or treat; Scotland never let it go and England is just reimporting it – restoring to its original date the tradition that had been shifted for political reasons to 5 November.

There were fires at Samhain too, I understand, but not from any love for James VII and for a lot longer. Samhain, Hallowe'en and Bonfire night are the same thing really; a harvest festival.

I said I was living in Belgium in the OP.
The Ladies group is very active online, even before Covid, lots of Zoom meet ups, etc.
The full name is The Brussels Ladies Meet Up Network. We organise our own meet ups, for instance for 3 years pre-covid, I organised a Pub Quiz team, there are lots of activites weekly, Book groups etc, online now of course.
The first ever meet-up was a lunch held here in my home, just 30 people then.
I went guising as a child in Scotland, and it was sometimes combined with 'penny for the Guy'.
I have even been asked here in Belgium why we don't have Guy Fawkes night, umm quick explanation of the fact we are living in a different Country.
I will be keeping an eye on the local news on Halloween and will keep you posted.