中西节日活动: Halloween, a Dubious Holiday

Among all the western holidays, Halloween is probably the most dubious one. 

Modern Halloween's practitioners can be roughly divided into three different social groups:

• The most joyful ones are the children, who go door to door in their own or some more affluent neighborhood at night in lovely or strange dresses, demanding candies with some benign empty threats. In addition, schools often host some events during the day to entertain them as well as the parents.
• The most polite ones are the professionals, who attend Halloween lunch or dinner party hosted by the company. Because of the presence of all the bosses and boss' bosses, everyone behaves super professional, but maybe not as fun.
• The most profitable ones are the merchants, who get to sell various weird merchandize in the name of Halloween costumes or decorations. It is not uncommon for a regular people to have a number of unusual costumes dedicated to wear on Halloween only.

However, despite these seemingly wide social roots, Halloween's root in the world-wide society is quite un-settled. First, because its alleged pagan roots, churches commonly call on their followers to resist this non-Christian holiday. Second, because Halloween happens on the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day, which is a sober holiday remembering the dead, it is usually hard for European folks to celebrate it with a happy mood.

Well, here is a question for you, my dear MYSJer friend: Do you celebrate Halloween? And if yes, what did you do this year?

Surfer_Diver
2013.12.10

所有跟帖： 

• "Trick or treat" , candies for kids. -紫君- ♀ (0 bytes) () 12/12/2013 postreply 08:24:45

• Are parents concerned about their children's teeth? Haha... -冲浪潜水员- ♂ (0 bytes) () 12/13/2013 postreply 02:23:40