Hallowe'en is an NT holiday

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I kept all the lights all tuned off. Which I usually do anyway. Not one singe ring. It's was raining pretty hard. That helped too.

I'm only recently diagnosed and I've always thought all holidays stunk. Except Halloween and the fourth of july. Those are the only two I get, dressing up in costumes is cool and I like movies, among them scary movies I like fireworks, I like setting things off and experimenting with how many you can set off or whatever (wink wink). Birthdays, Christmas, thanksgiving, valentines day and anniversaries I don't like. I can skip Halloween or the fourth of july and nobody cares, skip the other holidays and people freak out. I guess anniversaries and birthdays make sense, like I know I can't skip my kids birthday, but I don't always get why it makes people so mad. I can't imagine being mad at someone for not giving me something - it's weird. Except Halloween, if someone doesn't give you something on Halloween you can play a trick on them, I get that, it's right in the rules

Christmas and Easter bug me to death, I'm not even Christian, I've never been a Christian, but woa is me if I don't want to go drag a tree into my house spend $200 dollars on decorations and waaayy more money than I can afford on the kids, take two weeks off of work (not so bad really), smile, hug, chit chat (shudder), explain to everyone why I'm not talking, give everyone "something", wait no, "something thoughtful", "something thoughtful that isn't dreadfully too expensive or not expensive enough", make sure everyone gets something approximately equal ON christmas day, and bring some horribly ruined homemade pie to dinner that nobody will eat because my pies are ugly. Cook a perfect turkey twice a year!

And after all of that, pretend it's all about loving poor people and wishing for peace on earth or whatever. Nope I don't get it at all.

Birthdays, nobody respects my wishes that we don't celebrate my birthday. I really don't feel angry about it, but it's still weird to me that people have decided that I have to have a birthday. Huh? Now if I was a jehovahs witness they have to leave me alone, but everyone else, buddhist, atheist, hindu, cultist, wiccan, whatever all get birthdays. Is a birthday a religious holiday? Or is it just that only one religion does not celebrate it and everyone else on earth does? It seems like a good sensible atheist holiday I guess, but why don't people care that I don't want a party, I don't want a "thing". And then, when other people say they don't want anything they do, they totally do. I don't like it at all.


I think all holidays are NT holidays, except like memorial day, presidents day, you know take a day off work or school days. But, then again, not everyone gets those off either. I don't think it's really much of a holiday if everyone can't go.

I like Halloween, nobody even takes off work for it, so it's fair.

I think my favorite is a personal day.

"a paid or unpaid day of leave from work for reasons other than illness or vacation, taken at the employee's discretion."

I think that reads like poetry, my boss can't even ask why I'm taking a personal day!

1. Personally I love startling things like haunted houses and similar.
2. I def find it easier to act like say a were wolf or a zombie than trying to talk to someone.

I like the spirit of Halloween, with its scares and horror and jack-o-lanterns, and I wouldn't mind dressing the part of a monster since I love the horror genre. The trick or treating I can do without. We don't have the tradition here but some have been going trick or treating the last years. We had 6 groups ring our doorbell yesterday, and we played not at home. None of us can be bothered to feed the neighborhood kids' sweet tooth.
We did enjoy our own Halloween thing; good food and a horror DVD.

It's a fun time, but the best thing is, you can take part to whatever extent you feel comfortable. You can put out a pumpkin and turn your lights on or not, and mostly people respect the signal. You can go out partying in costume or just stay home watching scary movies. I enjoy the latter; to me it's a fun night in watching lots of horror on TV. But I kind of like the idea of knowing lots of people have parties and trick or treating fun on Halloween.

Oh for sure. Worst night of the year, hands down. Doesn't help that I know my yearly meltdown is on it's way, can't prepare for the noise, knowing doesn't make it not happen. For me, the feeling on the morning of July 4th is a little bit like when you feel the first labor pain (I've had three kids) - you KNOW there's absolutely nothing you can do about what's going to happen, and you're going to have to suck it up and power through it the best you can. But you still end up screaming obscenities and crying by the end of the night.

In regards to Halloween itself, I liked it a lot when I was little. I had a hard time saying "Trick or treat" and an even harder time saying "thank you" but in a group of kids I felt alright right up until I was in my early teens.

Now that I'm the parent, it's always been the routine that my husband takes the kids out and I stay home to hand out candy (because I am very cold sensitive and upstate NY is frigid after dark this time of year, and because I don't do groups of children, ever - he also always takes the kids to any birthday parties they're invited to. I know my strengths and weaknesses by this point in my life and there's just no point in making myself useless for a few days just to manage a couple of hours of trick or treating, or birthday parties (things like that make me need a recovery day or two, just like traveling - it seems to take me longer to snap back now than when I was younger, too) ).

Of course, since we've had kids we've always lived where we don't get many trick or treaters. So the first few years at our old house I'd hand out a dozen or so pieces of candy, and since we moved to this one in 2001 I've handed out none at all. So they go trick or treating and I stay home and get some alone time.

It's awesome.

My husband and I are in our late thirties and have a surprise, late in life (and welcome!) little boy. We didn't expect to be able to have kids. My husband's two aspie siblings have no children. My aspie brother was also gracious enough not to have kids so far. But my husband and I each have a sibling with children of ALL ages, ranging from adult to very small. We've always had to spend a lot of money on holidays for nieces and nephews. Last year we were like AHA! It's OUR TIME! Make OUR child an Easter basket! Halloween candy! Christmas presents! Birthday presents!

Nope. Turns out that we are just the nice aunt and uncle and that's why we have been doing those things all these years. YOU are probably the nice relative as well and that's why you have been duped into participating in holidays.

All holidays are NT pretty much.

The one possible exception being Independence Day.The point of that is to hang out in a crowd and watch fireworks, and not interact much with each other in the crowd.

I must respectfully disagree about Independence day, at least in the US, or at least the way I've always experienced it my whole life - it's meant to be the day when extended family (living nearby) all gets together for outdoors picnics and barbecues, pool parties, etc all day long right through fireworks after dark. The day never ends, and it's full of children running around screaming and often wet. And that's before a single explosion even goes off. *shudder*

How interesting, everyone's different takes on all the different holidays...

I've never been that big on the Fourth of July because it's generally a giant barbecue and I have such a hard time in large groups. Since I got married, though, we often just stay home (I, my husband and our two kids) and have something nice cooked on the grill and it's SO nice. As a little child I was terrified of the sound of fireworks but I was enchanted if I could watch them from some distance where they wouldn't be hurting my ears. I remember one year when I was very little where I hid underneath the car because of the noise. I was sad because I couldn't see the lovely colors in the sky but I simply couldn't stand all the bangs.

Christmas I'm two ways about. The times I love Christmas best are in my own living room, maybe with a kid or two curled around me, looking at the quiet, lovely, blinking tree. My littlest and I have a tradition of lying kind of under the tree and looking up into the lights. Christmas does ultimately get me very very stressed out but there are definitely aspects of it that I like, even love.

Halloween, well, you all already know how much I love that one! And my littlest is a chip off the old crypt, he's already planning his costume for next year.

I like all the other holidays (Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc.) if I can keep them little and manageable. I LOVE decorating, seeing the world look "different" for a couple of weeks than it normally does. I think probably what I love most about most holidays is that things look and act "different" and that at those times, "different" is okay. I never really thought of it that way but writing all this out, I really think that may be it.

I don't generally think of holidays like Christmas, Easter, etc. in a religious way as I don't have a religion.

I remember when holidays used to be fun; but that was back when all of the preparations were handled by the generation before mine. Now that I am of that age, I find holidays to be mostly stress-filled and disappointing.

I love Halloween but it is a pointless holiday now because I am too old to go trick or treating. But I take my kids now and I dress up for it. But where we live, we don't get any trick or treaters so I didn't bother handing out candy this year and our house is hidden behind bushes so it's pointless to have up Halloween decorations and carving pumpkins.

Because of the heavy rain we got, the mall was super crowded and it was overwhelming but I got through it. Plus we got stuck in traffic due to the rain so we were like half hour late to the mall after trick or treating there had started an hour ago and lot of stores were already out of candy but my kids still got enough.

We went trick or treating last night. The preparation was fun (decorating the yard & working on costumes), but the actual night had it's expected difficulties. Yet, it was the best one we've had. Weird, huh?

The older one was a dinosaur; she had continuous costume issues. Loose foot-straps, a *mask* ('nuff said), constant worry over how much candy was in her bucket (she'd decided we would go home when it was exactly 2/3 full so it wouldn't be too heavy and had estimated how many pieces would fit vs the current count). Oh, and she gets scared due to disorientation easily after dark. And she hates the unpredictability of other people's movement & it would be busy where we were.

The younger one was a ninja. Simple enough costume but he was terrified of each door opening because there would be a stranger behind it & even more terrified of it not opening b/c that meant he'd "failed" ringing/knocking (something he'd set up in *his* head).

I was a steampunk-style airwoman. Because I was having fun with Halloween for the first time *ever*, this was the most relaxed I've been & the kids picked up on it. And since we were all prepared for the sensory & other AS/ASD style issues we'd encounter we all had a great time *despite* all the stresses.

The only thing I hate about Halloween is all the stupid horror movies played this time of year.

Here's my favorite Halloween costume of all time:

Ugh, the Kansas City Royals just won the World Series. So guess what? Fireworks everywhere.

Things I like about Halloween:

The trick or treating (despite being 22, I'm only 4'11, so I can still pass for a teen/tween, especially with a mask on)

The costumes (as long as they're warm and comfortable)

The roasted pumpkin seeds

The cute/non-scary decorations

The autumn festivals/corn mazes

Things I don't like about Halloween:

Being scared (horror movies, haunted houses, people jumping out of bushes, gory/creepy masks, etc. I even get anxious going into the Halloween stores because of some of the creepy costumes and decorations they have, like the zombie babies and bloody skeletons that scream when you walk past them).

Pumpkin carving (I like creating the designs, but the cold sticky goo is a tactile nightmare).

The over-abundance of children and the incessant doorbell-ringing


Despite the downsides, overall, I'd say it's my second favourite holiday after Christmas.