Where I'm from Halloween was not a thing until ten or fifteen years ago when toy stores decided they wanted to use the opportunity to market ugly plastic decorations and shitty costumes. There's none of the cultural background that gives celebrations like this meaning and it all feels fake, like people are pretending to be Americans rather than taking part in a genuine celebration.

Celebrating Halloween as a non-American also has a tiresome aspect of cultural imperialism in it. Adopting stuff from other cultures is fine but why does it have to be stuff from burgerland every single time? Why can't we do Dias de los muertos or Chinese New year instead?

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

Ah, yeah, I should say my opinion is entirely based around my experience as an American. It's pretty deeply ingrained here- I mean imagine telling an American that they have to tolerate children running around at 9pm in the dark, they can't drive their cars around because the streets are clogged with those children and furthermore, they need to stock up on candy because they will be giving it away to the kids.

And there is a culture tradition of vandalizing the homes of people who are stingy about the candy.

If it were new here it'd never even catch on, just like public libraries.