Anyone on here ever seen the films-movies, Braveheart, or,,, The Sound Of Music ?? ......I love those. hope yall have a safe, and relaxing and fun Halloween.......especially, .....Aidie. this is really great, having an Autistic group to become friends with and talk to in life ! , From, Jake , from America.
I have seen both Braveheart and The Sound Of Music, I rather like Julie Andrews. Braveheart on the other hand, well I'm really glad you liked it, and wasn't the scenery lovely. 
Halloween in America seems to be quite a big deal, that goes on for days and people seem to spend quite a lot of time and energy on decorations but when I was a child halloween wasn't very much at all and I'm not sure it is even now. It was quite intense but for a very short time.
We used to make halloween lanterns but not out of pumpkins, in fact we never saw the big orange pumpkins in the shops, we made them out of turnips - seriously I'm not joking - they are almost impossible to carve and they are mean scary when you're done, if you let then dry out a bit they got even more so, we used to thread a string handle through them and take them guising with us. They were a necessity of halloween because the kept the bog fairies away (that would be peatbogs and not toilet bogs and nothing to do with the band if you're googling). One of the best things to be exported to and then back from America was the halloween lantern in pumpkin form because you can now buy carving pumpkins over here and they are a lot safer to work on than a turnip but nowhere near a frightening.
We also didn't do trick or treating we did a thing called guising where we dressed up in our fancy dress costumes, which were all home made and really basic but they were always something something scary, not cartoon characters or fairies unless the fairies were the traditional wicked kind that stole children and pets. We also had to work for our sweets by doing a little 'piece' a song or dance, tell a joke or a magic trick if you were older, and if we were good then we might get a little something - I seem to remember a LOT of monkey nuts.
When we got older there might be a party in the village hall which was more a load of activities strung together to make an obstacle course; most of these activities consisted of grabbing things like pancakes and sweets face first because you had to have your hands behind your back and the food and sweets were mostly covered in sticky stuff like treacle or toffee or were hidden in flour or submerged in water, so you were always clarty by the time you got to the end of all that. It was equal part wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. I liked it best when I was on the outside watching everybody else get covered in treacle. You probably have most of these types of things at your halloween bashes in the States though.
Guising isn't a practice that happens all over Britain and it is very Pagan Celtic.
