Curious to see the differences across the countries.
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Finland. Traditionally not a thing at all but each year the commercial aspects creep in more and earlier. Nothing about them can be contextualized further than “it’s an American thing”.
That’s pretty much what’s happening here in Australia. I really only see halloween stuff in stores. I don’t think anyone is buying it
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When i was a kid i had the feeling there was more children running around to get sweets too. Now not so much anymore.
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Yeah I remember dressing up as a kid and walking around the neighborhood, but that was a while ago and in a small city
Not a big thing in Poland but it’s present. Kids have fun going around their neigbourhood after dark (smaller ones usually under their parents’ watch) hunting for candies, young-to-middle-age people get an excuse to throw a party. It’s mostly a curiosity, not something people wait the whole year for or go out of their way to decorate their house like in the US. I personally don’t enjoy dress-ups but if kids are having fun and the religious people are getting triggered because of a “western, non traditional, pagan custom”, then I’m all for it.
Kids hunting for candies and adults having an excuse to throw parties is the main reason people enjoy Halloween in the US too. Of course, the season of scary is a ton of fun too. It’s the only time of the year that everyone goes all-out with horror movies and haunted houses.
They try to sell plastic garbage in stores every year and hopefully it stays a niche thing that goes away.
In Germany it’s not a big deal. People have an excuse to get drunk at a Halloween themed party but that’s it.
It’s not a thing.
The odd bar or club will have a “halloween” themed evening or something, but that’s all there is.
Some kids go from door to door. Some kindergartens celebrate Halloween. But they are a minority. This is in southern Germany.
Interesting, where do you live?
Southern Germany for two decades, Switzerland for the last couple years.
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Where are you located?
Bulgaria
Here in Italy we celebrate All Saints on November 1st and All Souls on the 2nd. Not many people are inclined to add another similar celebration just before these two.
I saw some kids having themed Halloween parties, and in some small towns kids going door to door, but it’s very local, most places would not have that.
In Norway and it’s definitely becoming more of a thing. Growing up I never did it, but now I run out of lollies because there’s so many kids out and about.
On the flip side, Norway does have their own Halloween style celebration where you go around dressed up and demand lollies from people door to door (julebukk - I’m not sure what the exact date for it is, and I think it varies depending on where you are, but it takes place between boxing day and up to and on new year’s Eve) which I’ve definitely noticed has been declining the last few years. Maybe kids want to celebrate Halloween more than julebukk? Probably because on Halloween you can just, show up and demand shit while on julebukk you actually have to prepare a little song and whatnot.
Shame because like, julebukk is a) actually traditional and b) has some weird ass lore behind it. Like it’s something about appeasing the Christmas goat (who may or may not be a demon saint Nicholas personally went down to hell to beat the shit out of until he agreed to help him)
Julebukk looks amazing!
Hungarian here, and a lot of far-right nationalists hate it, so it de-facto became part of the counter-culture.
What’s their problem with it exactly?
They think it’s an anti-christian holiday, and thanks to recent revisionism, they now think christianity was first practiced by Magyars, thus Halloween=anti-Magyarism.
I’m getting real bored of all these people
thanks to recent revisionism, they now think christianity was first practiced by Magyars
I’d lovw to know the mental gymnastics behind this one.
Hungarian national mysticism, mostly built around the idea of that the Magyars did even less crimes in history than we often dare to admit.
Since a big issue was the genocide of pagans by Stephen I. (to the point barely anything remained of it), a large chunk of it is to rewrite the religion part of our history. Even crazier is that many of them assume we were the Huns too, and since there was some myth that Mary might have been a Hun princess, this also proves Jesus Christ was Magyar himself. It is often paired with the idea that the idea, that the Carpathians are “actually the ancient home of the Magyars, because Huns”, thus denying the genocide of Avars, displacement of Slavs (this is very important, since Slovakia’s territory used to be part of Hungary, and denying the legitimacy of a nation is a good gateway for ethnic cleansing á la Russia), etc.
From the US so it’s obviously big there, though it isn’t quite what it was when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s.
Live in the Netherlands now and it’s not much of a thing outside of the occasional bar deciding to make a thing out of it or maybe North American immigrants throwing a party.
My wife and I are planning to move to the Netherlands by 2030 and what we’ll miss most is Halloween and Thanksgiving. We love the fall season of holidays in the US.
We’ll definitely host some American-style Halloween parties if the neighborhood would enjoy them. And decorate our home outside if that’s allowed.
Slightly off topic, but why is there no AskEurope instance (is that the right word?) on lemmy yet? Or am I just too incompetent to find it?
There is no such community yet, the current flow of content allows to have both the news and the AskEurope questions here.
You might ask here how the community feels about the idea, that could be a good indication on what to do next
