Christmas??

EdInvestor

I've always liked the Thanksgiving/harvest festivals that you find in quite a lot of countries in the autumn months.

http://www.crewsnest.vispa.com/thanksgivingUK.htm

Another one tending to go back to pagan times, but really quite relevant today given our obsessions about food (not to mention drink)! :beer:

seven-day-weekend

EdInvestor wrote: »

I've always liked the Thanksgiving/harvest festivals that you find in quite a lot of countries in the autumn months.

http://www.crewsnest.vispa.com/thanksgivingUK.htm

Another one tending to go back to pagan times, but really quite relevant today given our obsessions about food (not to mention drink)! :beer:

Yes, they are nice - I have no objection to thanking God for the harvest and the fact that I have enough to eat.

margaretclare

We do have Harvest Festival in the Methodist Church. We bring gifts which are distributed later - I think they go to the homeless centre. There are lovely Harvest hymns even though many are no longer relevant to modern life: 'We plough the fields, and scatter' and 'Come, ye thankful people, come' - this last I want sung at my funeral, because I think the words are very appropriate: 'All is safely gathered in/Free from sorrow, free from sin'.

Harvest Sunday was one of the occasions we had where we have lunch at church. Everybody brought a contribution, and it was a really lovely occasion.

Margaret

djohn2002uk

margaretclare wrote: »

Most of them are old enough to know to ring a bell, possibly ring again, but not to bang on the door and rattle the letter-box. I ignore them, DH goes and shouts 'go away'.

Sounds a bit miserable to me. No wonder kids grow up with the perception of old people being "miserable old fogies".
Pity we only had one pair of tots at our door this year with dad standing at the gate. My wife had bought a selection of chocolate bars (Kit-Kats, Breakaways etc) in case but they wont go to waste.
Kids come only for Halloween, Guy Fawkes and carol singing so a few days a year out of 365 isn't a lot.
Don't see anything commercial about it either, just something lots of children like to do and the younger ones probably don't understand being shouted at to "Go away". I know the two that came here wouldn't.
Lighten up Margaret, they are only children and where would we be without them?

margaretclare

I agree they are only children. What I don't like is the way they are manipulated by commercialism. The ones who rang, banged and rattled at our door had adults with them and they are the ones who should know better - if no one answers the doorbell then go away.

It hasn't always been 'something that children like to do'. It's something that has only arisen fairly recently, and wherever it came from or however long a history it has, children see it all over the place now, when they go shopping with their parents, on TV etc. I think that this year is the first time I've ever seen the costumes on display in supermarkets, plus pumpkins labelled 'Hallowe'en Pumpkins'. I have never seen it before, which suggests to me that the marketing is becoming more aggressive and more widespread.

Chocolate bars are not things that we want to have in our house and they definitely would go to waste. There are good reasons why this is so.

Margaret

[Deleted User]

my dd was busy upstairs with her baby and some older teenagers came banging at her door for a full 5 minutes. This is not is the spirit of halloween but is begging, pure and simple

We are fortunate in having no callers here as we have a community security guard. Taking tots around the houses with wide open bags IS teaching them about handouts. This happened at my last house and the youngsters got bigger and bigger each year

When I was little we had duckapple parties and a lit cutout swede, toffee apples and gingerbread. Then again, parents went to the trouble to organise this. Can I say that many parents take their tots out `begging` as the easy option today

margaretclare

I agree that this is begging.

In our local paper, the 'Southend Evening Echo' today, there are reports of fireworks being pushed through letter-boxes, bricks hurled through windows and buses had to be taken off the streets of one village/suburb because bricks were being thrown at bus windows. I quote: 'A pensioner in his 70s was left shaken after he offered a bowl of sweets to a group of trick-or-treaters. Instead of accepting the sweets, the youngsters smashed the bowl out of the man's hands'. This is the kind of 'lightening-up' that djohn2002UK would have us do. The poor man no doubt wanted to go along with this 'festival' in the hope of not being regarded as a miserable old fogie. It didn't do him much good, did it?

At this house we shall continue to have nothing to do with it. Same with carol-singing, if all the singers can manage is 2 lines of 'We wish you a merry Christmas'. I challenged some of them one year to sing at least a whole verse, if not more than one, and they couldn't. So they got nowt, but they were a bit surprised when I said I knew all the verses. They didn't think there was more to it than the first 2 lines!

Margaret

djohn2002uk

"there are reports of fireworks being pushed through letter-boxes, bricks hurled through windows and buses had to be taken off the streets of one village/suburb because bricks were being thrown at bus windows."
Don't know what that has to do with "Trick or Treat".
And, there must have been thousands of kids out that night trick or treating in Essex and you pick out one bad report. These days there are bad examples in almost every activity but thankfully they are in the minority. But of course you can always quote an extreme and tar everyone with the same brush. Small children with a parent at the gate are hardly likely to smash a bowl from a pensioners hand now, are they.
Perhaps you ought to admonish Martin for advertising Halloween at the top of this page earlier in the week and again now for Nov 5th.

Newly_retired

To return to the topic of Christmas, MIL cannot now come as she is not well enough to travel so it will be just DH and I. Then we go our separate ways on 27th to visit our "own" families. I find this sad, but it seems to be the only way to see everyone as near to Christmas as we can.

[Deleted User]

Oh heck. It looks as though we will now be 6 over 3 days at christmas. Me, being the jolly mum, will be doing christmas again. Plus beds and bedding etc. I do LOVE to see them but!!!

I am definitely going to be quick off the mark next year and we will DEFINITELY be booking a holiday somewhere