Giving up holiday celebrations in retirement (alcohol, housing, dating, mother)
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I think that another poster indicated that Halloween was not a great experience for them as a kid.
I agree with you that it's different once you get older.
Different stages of celebrating Halloween:
1) Dressing up in costumes and trick or treating around the neighborhood as a kid.
2) Once I got too old to trick or treat, I would hand out the candy.
3) As an older teen I would go to see a scary movie with a friend or two.
4) College - I dressed up and went to parties.
5) Single, working years - dressed up with the people I shared a house with, handed out candy to the trick or treaters, cooked good food, played games and invited friends over for a house party. We all took the day off after Halloween so that we could stay up late.
6) DINKS - once my future husband and I got our own place, we carved a pumpkin, handed out candy to the trick or treaters, snuggled on the couch watching a scary movie, enjoyed some adult beverages and good food. We often took the day off after Halloween.
7) After we had kids - pumpkin patch, hayrides, corn mazes, shopping for Halloween costumes, taking the kids trick or treating. One of us (usually my husband) would stay home and hand out candy while I took the kids out in the neighborhood.
8) Kids older, no longer trick or treating. Once the kids got too old to trick or treat they planned other things to do with their friends - movies, hanging out, haunted houses, hayrides, bonfires, Haunted Halloween at the amusement parks, etc. They still carved pumpkins and put out the spooky Halloween decorations. My husband and I went back to what we used to do before we had kids - scary movie, snuggling on the couch, good food and some adult beverages if we didn't have work the next day.
9) Approaching empty nest, kids post HS. Kids do their own thing now for Halloween. My husband and I doing fun things like taking the ghost walk tour and going to the beer garden to sample seasonal offerings. We'll probably continue to do it this way. I have a yard flag, some mums, wreaths and carved pumpkins set out for decoration. This year is the first year I haven't put out any of the spooky Halloween decorations.
This right here. Add some grandchildren and create new memories. We all love Halloween. My grands live close by in a small town with historic houses in the downtown area. They go all out and hundreds of trick or treaters parade through. The decorations, music, lights, costumes are insane. It is a blast. We are already planning out all our events for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's with our siblings and our children. Haven't given up any traditions. Love the holidays and all the magic.
It makes no sense to you.....because you are an adult. Think back to when you were a kid. Things are tough for kids right now. Let them have some fun....in a safe way. I don`t like the thought of kids wandering around in the dark with masks either.....but with adult supervision, it`s fine. And there are parties too.
Though kids are unaware before being taught about this holiday and anything else, I do think that it has grown to be a day for all to publicly cut loose (safely), pretending or able to act as some character. When else would the everyday person be able to do so. Then, the decor that has developed over time, allowing artistic types a chance for imagination, fun and self-expression.
This right here. Add some grandchildren and create new memories. We all love Halloween. My grands live close by in a small town with historic houses in the downtown area. They go all out and hundreds of trick or treaters parade through. The decorations, music, lights, costumes are insane. It is a blast. We are already planning out all our events for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's with our siblings and our children. Haven't given up any traditions. Love the holidays and all the magic.
That sounds like a lot of fun. Enjoy them when they're little and everything is so new and magical in their eyes, especially during the holidays. They're even a lot of fun when they get bigger.
I think it'll be a little while before we are blessed with grandchildren. Our college kids are only 19 and 21 now so I'm guessing it'll be at least 5 or so years before they're ready to make us grandparents. We'll have to see what the future brings. We will adore our grandchildren whenever they do arrive, that is for sure.
I was first going to put this in the "Rural and Small Town Living" forum, but then I thought that maybe retired people could relate just as much, or even more, to the following. Although this concerns Halloween, it could also pertain to any holiday.
Last year we moved from the suburbs to a rural area with no kids under age 18 in our neighborhood, so I am missing a sense of Halloween fun. Halloween was never a major holiday for my us, but we enjoyed having the trick or treaters when we were living in suburbia. We would also have a tradition of my husband making chili and watching a movie such as "Ghost", "Young Frankenstein", or a couple of the old B&W 1930's movies like "The Mummy", and we would also have a few carved jack o'lanterns around.
However, last Halloween (our first one here) just seemed to be such a letdown almost to the point of being mildly depressing, even though we still did our personal traditions; and I am now thinking that maybe this is a holiday that we should completely ignore in the future, but then there are so few holidays that we even celebrate at all now, that I am not sure that would be a good idea.
Can any of you relate to the above? If so, do you still "go through the motions" anyway, or have you just decided to let some holidays go by without much acknowledgment?
P.S. We considered inviting some of our neighbors over to share our tradition with us, but most of them are over 70, and so I doubt if they would enjoy something like that -- and especially because my husband's chili is eye-watering spicy!
Two thoughts...no other Holiday is going to be more dependent on the demographics of your neighborhood than Halloween. My wife was a bit put out when we didn't have any tricker treaters in our neighborhood, and we're Millennials. Less than a mile away, you can't get down the street for all the trick or treaters. It's a younger neighborhood.
Second thought...our neighbors are 70+ and while we don't hang out on Halloween, we do hang out with them, are great fun and would be totally up for that type of thing if they weren't doing halloween with their granddaughter.
Tennish years or so ago, when Mom was alive and well and lived in suburbarn community, she would celebrate Halloween with me and her little dog to help her. Me to help hand out the candy, the little dog to go nuts of all these people invading the house.
It was fun and while I liked doing it, it was not that easy on me since I had to return to the midshift, an hour away.
After Mom, well, that was the last holder of the door. Living in apartments, it was never a tradition, living in the rental, it never took off, and the country life isn't conductive to it, either for the distance and isolation or the rugged journey to get to the front door. To say nothing of the cats not being little dogs.
It is fortunate this last one that there is no way to continue the door tradition out here. While I have plenty of candy, supplies to feed my divers, I was hit with a case of vertigo shortly after I finished the evening flick and was in no shape to greet anyone....were I expecting them, which I was not.
We haven't had any trick or treaters on my very rural road in quite a few years. The main drag in the adjacent town is generally all decorated and the homeowners there offer a one stop shopping candy fest
But I do miss seeing the very little kids all excited about being dressed up.....precious...
Wow, I'm glad that doesn't go on in my neighborhood. Here it IS all about the kids. And only. I have literally never seen any adults wandering around drunk, or any fire pits in any front yards. That sounds crazy. Not saying I don't believe it but it does sound like something I wouldn't care for - and it wouldn't go over well in this neighborhood.
Tomorrow evening I plan to play my Halloween play list out on the front porch, which is decorated with spiders and rats and a sign that says Autopsy Room - LOL. Oh and two skeletons for good measure. I will be wearing a Viking hat and I plan to pass out really good candy. I don't PLAN to run out but you just never know between COVID shutting a lot down last year and rain the year before that. Prior to that I'd have about 400 kids come through but I think when we had the rain we only had about 100 and the same with last year. However, last year we had a hay ride and parents who felt safe loaded up their kids and went around the neighborhood. That was a lot of really itty bitty kids, and usually the foot traffic is school aged kids with their parents sort of tagging along. I think the hay riders came around twice but I didn't care. It was parents and kids spending quality time together and I like that.
I can't wait!
As a kid, I don't recall seeing people drunk, but I do recall some parents gave other parents a beer or they'd have a cocktail in their coffee mug! We lived in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone and there were TONS of kids. (A lot of Catholic families!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by marid4061
This right here. Add some grandchildren and create new memories. We all love Halloween. My grands live close by in a small town with historic houses in the downtown area. They go all out and hundreds of trick or treaters parade through. The decorations, music, lights, costumes are insane. It is a blast. We are already planning out all our events for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's with our siblings and our children. Haven't given up any traditions. Love the holidays and all the magic.
I want to live there. Sounds like a perfect Hallmark Holiday town!
Quote:
Originally Posted by JONOV
Two thoughts...no other Holiday is going to be more dependent on the demographics of your neighborhood than Halloween. My wife was a bit put out when we didn't have any tricker treaters in our neighborhood, and we're Millennials. Less than a mile away, you can't get down the street for all the trick or treaters. It's a younger neighborhood.
Second thought...our neighbors are 70+ and while we don't hang out on Halloween, we do hang out with them, are great fun and would be totally up for that type of thing if they weren't doing halloween with their granddaughter.
You should help them do up Halloween, maybe word will get around and your street will be hopping!
As a kid, I don't recall seeing people drunk, but I do recall some parents gave other parents a beer or they'd have a cocktail in their coffee mug! We lived in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone and there were TONS of kids. (A lot of Catholic families!)
Hey, Catholics can do some drinking (and some baby making - sometimes in that order! LOL). I can say that because I AM Catholic.
I recall overhearing a conversation between two neighborhood teenage boys back in the 1970s on Halloween night:
Boy 1: Did you get any eggs?
Boy 2: No they wouldn't sell me any eggs. But I got a bag of potatoes.
Boy 1: Potatoes?!? What are we going to do with potatoes?!?
Boy 2 (speaking slowly): Well, you can still throw them, and they don't break like eggs (long pause, then enthusiastically), but they hurt more if you get hit with one!
Halloween is one of my few happy childhood memories. The small town I was from had a Halloween parade on the 31st & it seemed like you were in it or watched it. Trick or treating was done on the 30th. I have no idea why it was done this way, but during that time I was away from my parents, so I was happy. The treats were a bonus. This was an era when people did homemade candy apples, popcorn balls, etc., & invited you into their house. I realize now how strange that was. I would NEVER have allowed that, as a mother.
As a parent, I had so much fun making costumes, decorating the house, & escorting the littles. Some people did haunted garages, haunted houses, etc. There was a haunted museum for a few years, a haunted corn maze, pumpkin patch, etc....lots of fun!
By the time the kids were grown, things had changed in my neighborhood. Kids were dropped off at the corner & then got back in the car at the end of the street. Large, aggressive young adults showed up with pillowcases around 10 & demanded candy. We started leaving the house before dark & returning around 11:30.
Now I live in a dark rural area with no trick or treating & have pretty much forgotten about Halloween. If I had grandchildren, I would love to start it up again. But it's gotten so over-the-top with wild & drunk adults & crazy-expensive decorations & costumes. It should be for children up to middle school age, IMO.
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