HALLOWEEEEEE'EEEEEN 2008

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

What are you people talking about?? It's Guy Fawkes over 'ere guv'na!

OK, we don't have Guy Fawkes over here either. For about ten years or so retailers have pushed the foreign concept of Halloween on us, but there's been a real disconnect and the past few years have thankfully seen a decline in this thing here in Sweden.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to push another odd holiday upon us. I shudder to think that they'd want us to celebrate Thanksgiving. Yeah, like we've had a lot of pilgrims coming here and eating turkey with the natives...

[Escriba]

Well, no Halloween here either, but supermarkets are trying to sold us the idea over our traditional "go to your family members' tombs and remember they're dead (and clean the damn gravestone)". At least if it was happy, as I've heard is in Mexico...

Other tradition is to represent "Don Juan Tenorio".

Anyway, I'm going to spend the days after October 31th in the "19th Horror and Fantasy Film Festival". Seeing weird films with a bunch of freaks... yay!

[JadziaKathryn]

Not much for Halloween here in Tassie er, that's a nickname for Tasmania, the Australian state, but there's a 15 year old here in the house I'm renting a room in (my living situation here is such a blessing because I'm part of the family ) and she wants to carve pumpkins. There's just one problem: we can't find the right kind of pumpkins. All squash is called 'pumpkin' here, but I think we're going to end up carving grey squash. That'll be a new one.

[Alelou]

I suspect the squash carved by American colonists were not what we see today either. And as Enterprikayak's picture proved, it doesn't matter at all once the lights are out.

This year I grew butternut and buttercup. Buttercup wins that taste test hands down. Oh my goodness, that's a good squash. Too bad it only produced half as much. I grew four different varieties of zucchini, and "Aristocrat" kept producing lustily right until the killing frost two nights ago. I was VERY impressed. Usually I lose those plants to powdery mildew or squash bugs pretty early in the season. (The only problem is, by the end of the season you're so sick of zuchini you don't necessarily WANT any more.)

[prisocisor]

My 16 year old and her friends (both girls and boys) are all putting on their finest transvestite gear and going to a local live performance of Rocky Horror.

That's hilarious! In sixth grade my classmates and I tried to put this musical on for the big Christmas Assembly... It was tragically culled from the line-up shortly after the dress rehearsal

[Distracted]

Sixth GRADE?

What a precocious tyke you were, Priso!

[evcake]

There's an old tradition of carving root vegetable lanterns too.



Must be difficult, since they lack a pumpkin's gooey innards.

[JadziaKathryn]

I like the option about buying candy because it's there and then ending up eating it all. This is what usually happens to me. Nice to know I'm not alone.

[Distracted]

We're not buying candy this year. If you come by the house we'll have some in a bowl anyway, though. I recommend that you not look at the expiration date.