Never been a fan. It used to put Miss AFB on edge people knocking on the door when she was younger. Having to sit in the dark so people would assume we were out.
I don’t miss those days.
Random strangers knocking on your door and asking for sweets is a very strange idea. Thankfully not one I have to deal with anymore.
Not that we ever have any sweets in the house of course!
In truth, it is one of the seasonal festivals (and one with a deep, and ancient, history and tradition) that I don't much mind; much of it - as is the case with Christmas - are Christian ceremonies (and more recent post Christian commercial imperatives) grafted onto pagan ceremonies and traditions.
As spring heralds birth (or re-birth), so the Hallowe'en festival (in the Celtic traditions, certainly), has been all about death, and dealing with - acknowledging, recognising, and saluting - death, and, as a part of that, also making the time to greet people whom you loved who are no longer in the land of the living. And many of the Hallowe'en festival traditions have been about conquering the fear of death, by addressing it openly, as a sort of pantomime, or festival, where you dressed up.
My father often used to take some time to visit the graves of his own parents at that (this) time of the year, he would be gone for much of the day, departing unconscionably early in the morning, and never encouraged - or wished - our presence, on these trips; he would then take the time immediately after that to pay a personal visit to his sister, my aunt, who still worked at the post office until well into her eighties; this was something private and personal to him.
