Well, that was surreal.

[conuly]

I don't think I've ever been 100% in the right before.

http://vintage-ads.livejournal.com/4187577.html

Apparently, it is wrong to tell people you were offended, it is wrong to explain why somebody else might be offended, it is wrong to know more about holidays or (to judge from the deleted comment) DST than the moderator or share information that might be useful or interesting on... wild leap here, probably ANY subject, it's wrong to reply calmly to other people as they get more and more hysterical, it is wrong (deleted comment again) not to snark back at somebody who just attacked you, and it's wrong to have trouble reading the aforementioned hysterical comments. I will concede to misreading one of the first comments I replied to, but it really is hard to find the words through a smokescreen of redundant question marks and exclamation points. Honestly, I wouldn't let Eva put that many in a paragraph! Refusing to throw a tantrum is way more trollish than yelling and screaming, I guess. And in this bizarro world, keeping your cool and trying to explain your position is both more offensive and more signaling that you "enjoy" being offended than throwing a screaming hissy fit and insulting anybody who disagrees with you. Plus, it's wrong.

It's probably also wrong to rejoin a comm after being removed, but at least that taught her the difference between remove and ban : )

It's a pity, because despite the fact that half the comm refuses to use lj cuts it's actually a fun resource. Gone, forevermore, because some people would rather wallow in their own ignorance. (I never used that phrasing, but now I think I ought to have. I always love a chance to accuse people of wallowing in their own ignorance. I love the image it brings up. And if you can get banned for saying things like "Halloween wasn't widespread until relatively recently" you might as well have more fun first.)

Is it wrong to see if anything interesting is happening on the DW mirror? I wouldn't join in if it is, just... read.

Comments

[conuly]

Re: TorT:

Sure, it's been around, but it wasn't universally widespread or accepted. And on the converse, just because it is declining in some areas, it is mistaken to conclude that no kids at all in the US trick or treat "the way we used to". It's a big damn country.

As far as the native thing goes, you're conflating two different commenters. There's room for reasonable people to have differing opinions, but the word there is "reasonable". First part of which is you don't assume people are personally attacking you just because they have another view.

Of course, this all confirms what I try to pretend I don't believe, which is that sometimes this whole "manners" thing is overrated. They never seem to work on the people I try them on. I ought to just say what I think more often, which I used to do. I didn't get better results, but I got them a lot faster.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Widespread and accepted enough; apparently it was quite a big deal throughout much of the country in the 1930's, which was when my parents were doing it in small-town eastern Nebraska. Apparently the 'tricks' were at least as important as the 'treats' back then, and they were quite ingenious - LOL, my brother and I heard about a lot of them, but of course WE were never allowed to even soap windows or throw toilet paper. (Phooey).

My first trick-or-treat was in 1960, in suburban San Jose, where it was a very big deal. My sisters are 10 and 7 years older than me, and trick-or-treat had been a big deal for them in Kansas and Tennessee before I was born; I've seen the pictures of their costumes each year. When we moved to suburban New Jersey in 1966, trick-or-treat was an unbelievably HUGE deal - every kid went, every house was lit up, decorated and giving out treats till midnight or later.

No, I really don't think anybody does still trick-or-treat the way we used to. Back in the day, the costumed children hit the streets at sundown, and there were no grown-ups anywhere - almost no teenagers, even; there was a huge taboo against going trick-or-treating after about age 14. Street after street after street after street, all night long - nobody but children out, and none of this modern sissy business of being driven from house to house, either. It was magical.

These days, of course, the whole thing is spoiled by the herds of parents hanging around in their tedious mundane coats while their kids go up to the doors, chatting with each other, directing and cautioning and just being a gigantic bring-down in general. They could at least have the grace to put on a costume, even if only a silly hat or something, but no; there they are, blatantly contravening the whole spirit of Halloween.

Show me a community where all the parents can bring themselves to allow their grade-schoolers to run free and unsupervised in the dark Autumn streets till midnight and eat as much candy as they want one night a year, and I'll say trick-or-treat as I once knew it is not yet gone from the world. I don't believe there is one, though; people are too paranoid these days.

I don't actually think I'm conflating two different commenters on the native thing. What I think I'm doing is (impartially) disagreeing with all the commenters, because I think everyone involved in that little kerfuffle was just about equally wrong. However, I'm not arsed to go back and check, because I can't see that it makes any difference. It's like that old saying, "Opinions are like assholes; everybody's got one, and some of them stink" - non-Natives can argue with other non-Natives as much as they like over their opinions about Native stuff, but it's never going to win them any Political Correctness Points with the actual Natives.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Here we got a couple dozen kids (pretty much all that live in walking distance). The under-fives were escorted by parents.

The second wave was alone or in pairs, ages about seven to twelve or so, and costumed.

The third wave was teenagers wearing street clothes with a smear of "blood" somewhere, in groups. When asked, they announced themselves to be zombies.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a pretty traditional Trick-or-Treat - are you in a small town, or a suburb, or what?

I get the impression that trick-or-treat got its first big popularity in the small towns of the Midwest in the '30's - it really is a 'town thing', doesn't work so well in either the city or the country. But it was the vast suburban tracts of the Baby Boom where it took on a much larger scope: miles and miles of streets of houses, three to six children in almost every house - so every house was getting several hundred trick-or-treaters.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

We're in one of those weird little clusters that is a suburb without an urb. ;-) It's a small housing development six miles from the city limits and two or three miles to the next cluster.