Halloween Open Thread
This post may contain affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Halloween is tomorrow — so let's have an open thread! Have you gone to Halloween parties this year, and if so what did you wear? Is your office doing anything for Halloween? What Halloween candy are you handing out this year, if you're participating? If you have kids, are you taking them out tomorrow night?
These posts are probably a bit out of date, but in the past we've discussed how to use workwear for Halloween outfits, as well as the best ideas for Halloween work outfits.
For my $.02, I'm kind of out of the spirit this year. My oldest son has decided he's too old for trick or treating… my youngest son never lasts very long, so hopefully it will be a pretty chill evening. I've barely decorated Casa Griffin with Halloween stuff, also — I haven't even pulled out our plastic skull wine glasses that we got from CVS a million years ago.
Stock photo via Stencil.
It feels like celebrating Halloween in work/school environments is going the way of celebrating Christmas in those environments, i.e., becoming less common as acknowledgment of diversity and effort at inclusion: not everyone celebrates Halloween. For my kids’ school, they are having a “fall party” instead. At work, we are having an explicitly Halloween happy hour, but it feels a little outdated.
I don’t really recall celebrating Halloween at school even as a child. It was always primarily an outside-of-school thing, with trick or treating being the main event. I agree there’s more awareness now that not everyone celebrates, but Christmas celebrations were SO prevalent in the 90s (at least to this Jewish kid) and it definitely doesn’t feel like Halloween ever had the same level of dominance in school settings at least.
All holidays, deities, and celebrations are made up. My office went full Halloween this year and I was expecting push back but everyone embraced it
I didn’t realize there were many Americans who do not celebrate Halloween. Could someone tell me more about this?
I had the same thought. It seems like a fun and silly day for a party rather than a day with any kind of religious significance.
Or at least, it seems like a day that may have religious affiliation to some (perhaps wiccans? etc.) but otherwise is not offensive. (I’m a catholic, but perhaps those of other faiths have an issue with the holiday?)
It’s a Bible Belt thing, even outside of evangelical Christian’s. The same kind of people that won’t let their kids read Harry Potter.
Not just a Bible Belt thing. My conservative Jewish cousins in NYC and Massachusetts don’t do Halloween. Jewish law says we’re not supposed to partake in Gentile holidays, and many more religious Jews interpret that to include Halloween. They’re fine with Harry Potter.
I grew up going to Jewish day school. We were not terribly observant but I never did Halloween until I was older. It was a “pagan” holiday. Still read the equivalent to Harry Potter (this was the 80’s so HP wasn’t created yet). Also didn’t do Valentine’s Day. But we did do thanksgiving and other truly secular holidays.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, some evangelical Christians and some more devout Jews and Muslims don’t celebrate Halloween due to the holiday’s pagan and/or Christian origins.
But in my college town, most people who don’t celebrate are the children of recent immigrants who aren’t well-versed in American traditions yet.
Skipping holidays because they don’t apply to everyone – doesn’t that mean we don’t have any celebrations left at some point? My office leans into it by highlighting more holidays, and you just join whichever you care about ans skip the rest. Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, Chinese New Year, Pi day, etc.
I also align with this approach. It makes the most sense to me. Just let folks opt-in or opt-out as they desire, but its nice to have the opportunity to celebrate everything, if one is so inclined.
My office takes Halloween very seriously, which is fun! Lots of people dress up. I’m boring though.
I really dislike workplace Halloween celebrations. I’m a big grinch in that way. It can be hard to find a costume that’s cute, creative and work appropriate. But thanks to remote work I haven’t seen coworkers on Halloween in years.
For school, I don’t have strong feelings about it. I think a costume parade or “fall party” is fine (much the same way “holiday parties” at Christmas are ubiquitous) but I also think it’s fine to not do anything at school and just let kids celebrate with family and friends. There are a zillion non-school Halloween celebrations these days.
It feels like every year the list of Halloween stuff we do expands. This year, in addition to trick or treating we had a couple of Halloween parties, a Girl Scouts Halloween event, a couple trunk or treats (plus many many more that we skipped), Zoo Boo, our town’s “fall” (Halloween) festival and dress up days at school and most kid activities. It’s kind of exhausting and I’m looking forward to Friday and putting this season behind us. Plus it’s been unseasonably warm all fall and I’m really looking forward to some chillier weather.
I don’t like how the trunk-or-treats are on days other than Halloween. The original point of trunk or treat was to provide an alternative to trick-or-treating in neighborhoods where it’s not safe or feasible to walk from house to house at night. When I was a kid in the ’80s the shopping mall did something similar with trick-or-treating at the stores on the actual night of Halloween. Now the various organizations use trunk-or-treat as an outreach activity, and they purposely put it on a different day because people wouldn’t come if it meant they had to skip trick-or-treating.
I am extra salty about trunk-or-treat this year because it is interfering with parking at a place where I have to be tonight.
My hometown mall definitely had a Halloween event on a different night in the 80s. I have photo proof that I did both the mall event and trick-or-treating every year as a kid. But yeah it’s out of control now. We only do the ones where we have a personal connection to the organizers, or it’s a cause we really want to support, but even that is too many! My kid has probably gotten 200 pieces of candy and hasn’t trick or treated yet.
I am a little annoyed at the expectation that I join a Halloween costume contest at work. I’m an attorney in my late 30s…a member of an understaffed legal department trying to keep the company from going off the rails. I do not have time for this.
Went to 2 Halloween parties already this year and have 2 more to go to this weekend. I’m a childless adult with a very social partner. I’m already exhausted by this. I’ve never been a huge Halloween person and maybe I’m just a grump, but when did Halloween turn into a multi day/week event?
Yes, it used to be one day! Now it’s a whole season. I have elementary age kids and really enjoy Halloween in the non-work context, but I think the spread into a multi-week event is diminishing the excitement of the actual day.
Oh my god. 4 Halloween parties? You are stronger than me. I think that would be enough to make me break up with my partner. kidding aside (sorta), that is just insane. None of my circle does that, especially if childless.
In all fairness, we’ve been together for 5 Halloweens now and I’ve avoided pretty much every party so far. So I’m trying to be a good sport this year. But it’s been a source of tension in the past and we’ve really had to navigate how to handle our differing tolerances for parties and activities and socializing!
When adults co-opted it from the kids!
i feel the same way. i am very much anti school or work Christmas parties (assuming it is a non Christian school), but am fine with holiday parties or winter parties that aren’t Christmas-specific. i know many people feel differently, but in my mind Halloween and Valentine’s Day are so secular/americanized at this point, but a Christmas tree still has more religious undertones
Work appropriate Halloween costumes are a challenge.
I’ve gone as a medieval queen. Witch is pretty easy: black dress, hat, some makeup.
Back in 2008, I did a button down blouse, pencil skirt, glasses, Miss Alaska sash, and slung a stuffed moose over my shoulder.
I’m not a fan of Halloween at work, apart from perhaps a little fall decor and some candy bowls on desks. But Halloween as a holiday? Bring it. It’s become my fav. With small kids, it’s just so super fun. Outdoor activities are still possible and people are willing to get together, before the winter sets in. I get that everyone doesn’t celebrate Halloween, but practically speaking, it’s an easier holiday because it does cross many more religions and ethnicities.
Well, christmas lights are already up in my neighborhood. I am disgusted.
We live on a major trick or treating street. Halloween being on a school night will reduce the traffic a bit, but it will be hectic to the point where we can’t sit down between trick or treaters, and we LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!
We all wear costumes, sometimes friends come over to give out candy (usually when it’s on a weekend) and we turn off the lights at 9PM. It’s a great night. And I get to eat Reese’s peanut butter cups with no guilt!
I am SO sad that I don’t live on a truck or treating street because I love seeing kids in their costumes! Every year I buy candy just in case and every year it goes unused (by kids, I definitely eat it haha)
Same here. We get anywhere from 50-80 trick-or-treaters on average. We are also the full-size candy bar house, so we’re generally pretty popular on Halloween!
Ooh nice. Last time I counted we got over 200 so we are snack size only!
I would enjoy just once getting a lot of trick or treaters!!
That doesn’t seem like that many to me! We definitely get 200+ most years.
By the way, my kids are college-aged now, and they can still point out every single house in the neighborhood that gave out full sized candy bars!
All the schools in our area have the day off (for Diwali) on Friday. Bonus is no school after Halloween this year.
Oh that’s lovely! I chaperoned a field trip on November 1 last year. It was… interesting.