I spend more money on Halloween than I do on Christmas. And every year I realize it more and more … I’m spending money on Halloween to share it all with a bunch of strangers and their children rather than on my own family and friends.
I already give lots to my family throughout the year, I don’t need a special holiday to justify those relationships. I used to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on decorations, suppers, gifts and doing things for family in or around Christmas and none of it ever made a damned difference. I still love my family but it wasn’t because of Christmas … it was because they are my family. I don’t do any of that any more and you know? I still have the same level of appreciation for my family and they do the same for me … without all the BS of Christmas fanfare.
But on Halloween, I’m giving more to random strangers I don’t even know or will probably never meet again during the year … and all just for the sake of being nice to them.
So now I find that Halloween is a more giving and fun holiday than Christmas. It’s made me realize just how wholesome Halloween is compared to the commercialized hellhole that Christmas has become.
All my friends and I have felt this way for a few years now. My wife and I are planning to spend $200 total on Christmas and that’s including the dinner we’ll likely host for friends.
Halloween is fun and my wife and I get into it but it’s also becoming a very commercialized thing around us. Everyone buying the massive 12 ft skeletons and trying to outdo each other with the yard and giving out bigger and bigger treats. Someone was handing out full Doritos bags this year, not the single serve, we’re talking family size.
I think my wife and I are going to try getting into Mari Lwyd next year instead.
I will never be impressed by purchased decorations that obviously don’t take any effort to set up
“wow, the same inflatable from home depot as the house around the corner! amazing”
ofc, I did fuck all the last couple years, so I can’t complain. I’m hoping to change that next year
also giving out family size bags of chip (let’s be real though, they’re basically only as big as regular full size from 10 years ago despite costing twice as much) is nuts. I ain’t got that money
I do spend a lot of money on Halloween … more than Christmas … but it also means I don’t go crazy either. Almost all the money I spend just goes to candies, chocolates and chips … the Halloween serving size … I’m not going to start going further than that. I also don’t spend much on decorations, I put up enough to make people and kids know I’m celebrating Halloween … and I decorate five or six real pumpkins. That’s it … I put on a sound system with scary music and Halloween songs and serve candy all night long.