Paula's Place

Paula's Place

Saturday 15 October 2011

Halloween

Most of the time I post pretty lighthearted reports on Paula's activities.   There are plenty of other places on the net which do the in depth analysis stuff, and plenty more that do the - err - less tasteful stuff.   My aim is really just to share the experience.   However now and then there are some slightly heavier musings.   I have been trying to prepare a post or two in advance and see that the two I have prepared fall into the slightly heavier category.   This is the first, unless I get inspired this afternoon you will get the second tomorrow, since I will be spending the morning running a work party at my church clearing the gardens, I doubt if I will have any cross dressing experiences to relate, so here goes.

I can't help but notice that all the American bloggers are getting very excited about Halloween, how it gives them the license to dress however they choose, to go out in public and not be questioned about their choice of clothing.   I have never been to happy about the concept of celebrating Halloween, maybe this is just a reflection of my early upbringing, I went to a Church school, and sang in the Church choir, the Church in question being All Saints, so for me it was always All Saints day that was celebrated not the day before!

In the UK we basically don;t celebrate Halloween, although it has been slowly catching on over the last few years.   Therefore latterly I thought it was just my natural anti American bias that prejudiced me against Halloween, you know the whole, cultural imperialist bit "We don't celebrate Halloween, we're English" was very much my attitude.   However now that I am a Christian I find the whole thing rather distasteful.   The idea of celebrating evil, is well, wrong.   I know a lot of you will say that it's just a bit of fun, but maybe that is the clever, bit, making us think that it is not important.

But the real problem for me is that I really like the idea that for at least one day each year everyone has the freedom to dress and behave how ever they like, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.   There are people whose actions and opinions I respect who are going to dress up for Halloween, Stana of Femulate fame, Meg from call me Meg, Vanessa at Crossdresser Haven, all of whom talk about the joys of dressing on Halloween.   I can only surmise that it is very different in America.   Although I no longer work in an office, I could not imagine any circumstances where it would have been acceptable for me to go to work dressed, on one day a year while appearing to be "normal" the rest - like they say "only in America"

5 comments:

Pretty Sissy Dani said...

There are some extreme groups here in the USA who decry Halloween (they also decry Harry Potter and virtually any story where magic plays a part)...but the idea here isn't to "celebrate evil". It is closer to denying evil its power by making fun of it--rather like making a bully seem small and inconsequential by pointing out his shortcomings.

Paula said...

Dani, you make a very good point, and one I should have thought of but hadn't. Perhaps, since most of my readers are from the States I should have thought of this.

I think that this is another of those cultural differences between the UK and USA. Here I think most of the people who do celebrate Halloween do not think about what they are doing at all, but there are also some quite sinister activities going on as well. Because there is no tradition of celebrating Halloween here I think that any underlying concept of what it is all about is missing.

Angela said...

Halloween has only recently started to be celebrated in Australia. Although it is still pretty low key where I live.
We seem to have become strongly influenced here by American culture in recent years due in large part to the impact from popular US movies and television shows.
As a Christian I have felt similar to yourself in not wanting to glamorise evil. But I also like the idea of having one day a year when you have the freedom to dress any way you like.

CallMeMeg said...

We kid ourselves. I think most people know we didn't just decide to dress up for Halloween. Mostly, people don't just come out and ask "is this just for the holiday?"

But mostly, they know.

Paula said...

I suspect that the question you all realy want to hear is "why arn't you wearing a costumn?"