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Just wondering what Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, whatever are like in your neighborhood?
For example, Halloween. Did you have tons of trick or treaters? Parties at the local clubs? An excuse to smash pumpkins? Not a big deal?
Or Thanksgiving--are all your neighbors out cutting the lawn today because everyone's coming to your neighborhood for dinner-- or has the place cleared out, because this is an opportunity for a 4-day road trip?
Are neighbors already starting to put up the Christmas lights? Or, do most of the people in your neighborhood celebrate another holiday (and what do they do to celebrate).
Our town is great during the Holidays. People are great, lights are on.
Our neighbors drove an hour and a half - 2 hours just to give us gifts while a family member was in the hospital.
We decorate. Nothing too crazy, just candlelights in the window, we have a professional do the trees because we don't want it to look stupid (he's coming on Friday to do it), and that's about it. Looks nice.
The neighborhood does the same thing pretty much. Peaceful street, beautiful when it snows. Lights go up the weekend after Thanksgiving.
It can get cold in December, so everyone's out putting up lights starting the day after Thanksgiving. Everyone does their own lights, or they hire a few high school kids--so the effect isn't "professional" but I like it. Puts me in a happy mood after a long commute on slushy winter roads.
Most of the homes have decorations of some sort, but many prefer to conserve energy and simply put wreaths in all the windows and build a snowman in the yard.
A few people go crazy with the yard decorations. One guy plants an entire forest of those pop-up spiral christmas trees. Santa on a Harley (or surfboard) also seem to be popular.
A popular thing to do here is string orange, red, and purple lights for halloween, and then simply swap green strings of lights for the orange ones to get the Christmas lights.
I'm out in the suburbs, so trick-or-treat is a big deal here. New neighbors get warned to buy at least 2 big bags of candy. My first year we had 80 kids and I ran out--I had to start handing out breath mints...
My block has a costume parade and party for the younger kids on the Sunday before Halloween. It lets the kids show off their costumes in the daylight and it's fun to see Spiderman running around the yard, chasing Frankenstein and Hilary Clinton.
Thanksgiving is no big deal. People go off to be with their families. Sometimes the neighbors who are still around get together towatch football and the weather channel (as in "Oh jeez, check out the rain in Buffalo... I'm sure glad I'm not flying THERE" and "Let's see how bad the traffic's gettin in Denver...")
Yeah, Halloween is big out here, too. We never ran out of candy because we don't live in the village, but it's still fun and we get trick-or-treaters. I counted 23 this year. All the trees and hills out here make it extra creepy. Then, about a half-mile from our house is an old graveyard, and I mean really old, old to the point you can't even read the names. We drive by it everyday, and at night it can get a layer of fog. I love it, but at the same time, I hate it (it's supposedly haunted).
Thanksgiving is big here. We have a big neighborhood football game. Everybody's watching football, love it. People have the fireplace going. God, I love the Northeast during thsi time of year! It's perfect, relaxing, everybody's in a good mood, lights are out, fireplaces are buring. Ahhhh, gotta love it.
I live in the suburbs, so our neighborhood tends to be rather insular and introverted; people don't really extend much of an effort to get to know one another on a personal level for fear that they'll move away due to the transient nature of their careers.
On Halloween we had very few trick-or-treaters, even though there are roughly 30 homes in our subdivision. I believe every one of our neighbors is Christian, so Christmas often entails every one of these 30 homes being adorned with icicle lights, wreaths, giant inflatable Santas, decorative garage door lights, etc. (although ironically very few Nativity scenes).
My neighborhood, as you can see below..
is hilly and the streets are narrow, dark and windy so we dont get many trick or treaters-plus many folks have gates to keep out paparazzi and assasins(LOL).
Thanksgiving, like my whole cul-de-sac is back east or out of the country...It seems like we're the only ones here on our whole street(with my inlaws who will land in a few hrs)
Christmas, we have some lights here and there, but not too much. We do however, have fabulous christmas parties
I had loads of trick or treaters, and a party at the corner bar (that gave out candy until 6pm and then forbade kids from trick or treating at the bar). Christmas lights are starting to go up. I'll put mine up after Thanskgiving. My landlord puts a wreath on my front door whether or not I like it ... I don't care, I'd probably choose a nicer wreath, but, seriously, her choice doesn't bother me that much I've got better things to think about than her choice of Christmas decorations for the outside of the flat
----Check out this neighborhood in Baltimore during the holidays. "The Miracle on 34th Street"
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