Is Halloween Overrated?

So before we race of and start getting all festive-y I thought I would take a quick moment to ask a big question..... Is Halloween Overrated?

Here in the UK Halloween has historically been about dressing up as a kid usually in something scary and maybe knocking on a few people's door when trick or treating. It was never a major holiday. No-one ever decorated their house unless it was for a party.

Fast forward 20 years and Halloween has become so much more, well for me. We can blame the Americans, I blame my American, we can blame commercialism or we could just accept that people love the opportunity to dress up and Halloween is the perfect excuse.

Over the years this blog has featured many of our Halloween celebrations. A lot have included a night at the Rocky Horror Picture show but more recently it has involved family costumes. The change happening when we bought our house and could actually decorate and welcome trick or treaters.

This years Rocky Horror Picture Show outfits!

As with most things I took some convincing on Halloween. I'm not a fan of scary things and I used to prefer to turn off the lights and wait out the trick or treaters rather than encourage them. But then I realised it was me missing out in that situation. I was the one wasting an evening avoiding Halloween.

The first time I embraced Halloween as an adult was at Uni. Thankfully there are no photos in existence but I can guarantee 'scary' and 'not wearing much' would have both featured. Ah the shame!

Then when I moved to London, just before Halloween, it seemed like a great theme for a housewarming party. The only challenge was with everyone fully embracing the dress up, my 3 housemates and I had no idea who people were and it turned out by the height of the night we had a ton of strangers as well as friends. Thankfully we and the flat survived!

That year was the year I met Laura. We had just started working together and Halloween was some of our first pictures together. I should have sensed then that Halloween was going to be something I celebrated every year!

It's fair to say that we have celebrated Halloween in some way every year. Even our low key Halloween nights involve a fully decorated outside - complete with spider webs on the bushes and purple covers on the lights. For added scariness this is also scary music playing when the door opens.

Laura's proudest Halloween achievement is that in 3 years we have gone from being the only decorated house to now being one of 5 - all because of her :)

Last night we had a record 100 pieces of candy and we still ran out! That's 3 years in a row we have had to put out a sign saying 'Sorry we have run out of candy'. That also involves giving away our favourite pieces that we save till the end in the hope that we get to eat them :)

This year was fairly low key though, well for us.

Previous years Laura had baked for work and held party games, see the outcome here and here.

Or there was the year we bought Paul the Pumpkin into the world and spent the entire evening making him do things pumpkins shouldn't do! Check out the photo shoot here.

A personal highlight of that night

Last year studies by Mintel showed that spend in Britain now hits £300 million on Halloween! With 40% of adults saying they would do something for Halloween. That is a significant increase from the previous year in a trend that is set to grow.

So whether you are a Halloween lover or hater one thing is clear - it's only getting bigger! If you think it's overrated now, prepare yourself it's only getting spookier!

I've accepted it for all the joy it can bring. Seeing kids faces when Bisbee shows up in her outfit, the sheer confusion on their faces when Laura asks who they are dressed as (either it should be obvious or their parents have just chosen a random outfit and they genuinely have no clue), the fear and anticipation of the first trick or treater. Laura's always convinced it's going to be teenage boys, it never has been. Laura's strict 'TAKE ONE' rule that I find so awkward (it's being British I think) but if she didn't do it we'd run out far sooner so I know it needs to be done.

It's a shame Halloween is but once a year!