You can always move back to where you once left.

Nah, they probably celebrate Halloween in excess there now too :)

I loooooove Halloweeeeeeen. I always made my own costumes as a kid (immigrant!). Buying new costumes was just not an option so there was no "convincing" necessary. Obviously if given that option any child would purchase a new one. As to dressing up as an adult, why not? Its not particularly my thing but I certainly don't mind if other people want to walk around in costume! At least there are no Halloween Carols for 2+ months :)

Yes - Kira touched on this... but if it wasn't for an overdose of Halloween... Retailers (radio stations, etc) might start even earlier with Christmas stuff. :) I love Christmas but I say every holiday should be capped at one month of decorations/celebration/etc.

wow what a depressing person

Out of curiosity, do you have similar disdain for Christmas, and Easter?

Wow. I adore Halloween. It leads up to very important day, All Saints day. This is a great time to enjoy dressing up (kids AND adults too!). It's a time to walk around your neighborhood and meet people or play hostess giving out candy. I bought Halloween candy in walmart next to the fake Christmas trees. So? Every holiday is too commercialized, just don't feed into it. Enjoy your kids happiness. Halloween here is better than Ireland. I lived there too.

And about the 8billion spent on halloween? What about the $$ spent for a silly presidential campaign? Now THAT'S a waste.

One more point and I will be done:
National retail federation states that a RECORD 170 million people are celebrating Halloween this year spending an average if $40.
OBAMAS vacation to Hawaii for 4 people is $1,000,000
Per person. So please don't criticize holiday spending, since WE the TAXPAYERS pay for their trips. Done.

Every holiday is overdone and overblown. Candy, gifts, decorations and parties... its too much. But I enjoy every one of them because its a day to step away from my normal boring life and experience something different. And without that excess? The only people hurt are the retailers... and when they hurt.....

I completely agree! Thank goodness someone else has my grinch tendencies! That may be something to do with a transplant from the UK 14 years ago. I have 'celebrated' just 6 years with my kids. As a child I never went trick or treating. I have developed a disturbing liking for Reeses Peanut Butter cups recently though!

I'm a bit of a Halloween grinch today because I'll be treking to my mom's house in Worcester to hand out candy for her until she gets out of work. There are two reasons I'll be taking this shift: 1) my mother would never think of not handing out candy; she's happy to do it, and 2) in the past, houses that didn't hand out candy were egged. Those types of shenanigans make me grinch-like. :-)

people spending $8 billion on Halloween means that money flows to people and companies...ie jobs.

look at the bigger picture sometimes. its not always really about fun and games. while i agree maybe the money could be spent on less frivolous things, but the fact is that its a positive sign that the money is being spent at all.

As a kid I throughly enjoyed Halloween. Walking around with friends and family. Being out in the dark and getting the candy; staying up late. Once I grew out of that I wanted nothing to do with the holiday except when asked to dress up at work or to hand out candy to the kids. After I had kids and they throughly began to enjoy the decorations and me dressing up - I had to do it for them. They are only this little once and mine are growing up too fast. A few more years and mine wont want anything to do with it. I love to make them happy and have a great time with them : ) Life is too short not too!

yeah, and I bet you wear a ridiculous costume when you celebrate boxing day across the pond.... but...I think halloween is something many adults enjoy because we remember back to the experiences we had when we were kids. Perhaps not having those childhood experiences to 'fall' back on result in your being unable to identify with the 'spirit' of the holiday. Let me ask you this... do you enjoy Fourth of July??? :)

Look at it this way... it is one of the few holidays left that is just about fun. Christmas is the height of excess and carries a lot of baggage, Easter has detached itself from the true meaning of the holiday and is just a celebration of spring, and Valentine's Day exists purely to guilt people into buying cards, candy and flowers. Halloween is all about letting your kids have fun dressing up and having fun...nothing wrong about that.

You could transpose many of your issues w/ Halloween to Christmas.

To be clear, I'd like to be in a meeting with a French Maid. :)

That said, I hear you. On the flip side, I remember the absolute mad, crazy joy that halloween brought to me. I remember the abandon with which I could allow my imagination to run free, to not be the every day me, but to be someone or something else - spooky or not. I take so much joy in seeing my own kiddo experience this that it's hard for me to not be all for it.

I hear what you are saying - my daughter is super excited to be a yellow ninja tonight!! It's fun to see her anticipation. Have a happy Halloween!

I for one, love Halloween! I drove by a house in Milford today with a fake bat that's flapping it's wings already, and I thought - that's great! It's a holiday that kids just love, and even adults get into, and it lets us all be kids again. I am happy we were all lucky enough with the weather to have tonight....so, no grinching here.

Thanks to everyone that commented. Wishing you all a very happy Halloween!

Sam:
It is a goofy commercial venture. I certify that it has grown in popularity because people are now waiting for another wrong headed commercial venture of a religious nature called Xmas. There is just so much time to get those displays of crap out, so let us skip a real American holiday, called Thanksgiving, and go right for Black Friday. Afterall, in America, its not the sentiment, its the dollar. Welcome to the wondeful world of bullshit!