Stop pretending Halloween is a thing in Europe
Stop pretending Halloween is a thing in Europe
Tired of all this pumpkin and plastic skeleton crap everywhere. Thanks, marketing ghouls 
What, are we going to start celebrating the 4th of July next? Might as well with the NATO membership I guess
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At least Halloween is fun
Fourth of July fucks with animals and the sound-sensitive
replace 4th of july with World Hotdog Day
You know what?
Better holiday
Now that's a holiday I can get behind
Do Americans also buy fireworks for New Year's?
We buy fireworks for everything
especially where they're illegal
Best is when you sneak in your own lil stash from Tijuana, México.
In Communist Europe fireworks are literally illegal except on New Year's Eve
In amerikkka fireworks are banned on a state by state basis so we just go to whichever neighboring state hasn't banned them and buy all the illegal fireworks we want
If you can buy fireworks whenever, how are there still American kids and teens left with eyes and fingers
Most places don't sell to kids
You gotta find an uncle or other suitable patsy to get them for you
It's actually mostly a county basis I think. They're legal in the US in like 49 states with only like 10 or so even having major restrictions. But in the county I live in, just for example, they're completely banned.
Obviously, when you only have to go to a neighboring county to buy the banned thing, it's not really much of a ban.
Except they have started to sell them for the middle class for the end of cottage season party now too. Which also did not exist before, not even ten years ago.
Btw. we did have our own pagan version of Halloween, a harvest festival called Kekri in Finland. Also there is another very Halloween like celebration still persists that came from Demmark during christian times. It's on January 13th and is still celebrated in the archipelago. I was lucky enough to grow up participating in that well before the Amerikkkan halloween was a thing here. We did all the costumes and things with going from house to house to sign songs and get candy.
Isn't Kekri specifically more of a Karelian/Eastern Finnish tradition and less of a thing in the more Swedish-influenced Western and coastal regions?
Guess I'm not middle class enough to have ever heard of that cottage fireworks shit, I'm sure wildlife appreciates it
I had no idea about this new firework day either until I saw the seller stalls this autumn and heard the fireworks from the suburb nearby. They have been consumerisming the venetsialaiset thing (did not even exist like a decade ago) so hard.
Kekri was an ancient deity, looks like a Karelian one so this too might be a part of the way we have culturally appropriated Karelian beliefs. Or might be this was a thing everywhere, but the custom has survived best in the Karelian region. It has apparently been also politicized by Maalaisliitto at one point. But it is very much like Samhain, even has the same beliefs of a kind of liminal space from harvest to when a new cycle begins with the dead walking the earth and ancester spirits being restless. Pretty cool.
God so many.
Americans buy fireworks for every conceivable holiday, but yes New Years is second to only 4th of July in random fireworks going off everywhere.
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I used to buy fireworks from TJ, Mexico and bring them back to SoCal for fun. They're way fuckin better, I've seen Americans go to Mexico to celebrate it there because it's better in TJ and Rosarito
They're available year round?
Buddy, there are five dedicated fireworks stores within 20 minutes of my house
For comparison, there are two grocery stores in the same radius
Yes, sometimes even at the supermarket. Although I think it depends on the state.
In Finland, fireworks pop-up stands appear at supermarkets and malls in the week leading up to New Year's Eve and then they're gone
Thats identical to the US for at least half the states
Wait, you're Finnish and you're complaining about OUR dress up holiday? Isn't that the land of blackface Christmas?
No, that's the Dutch. I also have nothing against Halloween, just being shilled witch-shaped candy for the entirety of October
nothing more American than importing Chinese tech
I legitimately hate the fourth and new year's because people take what could be, you know, "fun" within bounds and do that thing that Americans are especially known for and go "no no no! 3 hours of fireworks and shooting my gun into the air wasn't enough! I need the fourth also on the fifth and the sixth!..." it's become somehow fucking acceptable to have week-long pre-celebrations and then another week OR TWO of post-holiday celebrations. I don't feel like digging up my rant I posted on my community's... posty thing (I don't read the replies, they can suck me) but I'm pretty sure it was like July 12th and I still heard bottle rockets and shit.
Btw, there's laws and regulations covering basically the entirety of the area I live that limit fireworks to certain types and whatever and the way the law is written makes it essentially illegal because you can't do it within like 200ft of any residential area including one you own.... blah blah. It's illegal is the short story. The only people who can, and this was the case when I was a kid, shoot them legally is... the local fire department. They'd do a show every year. Like a massive show and it would be like the holiday and two days on the weekend. But hog-asses weren't satisfied with that and it's just become this horrible annoying as fuck month of just sitting there thinking "my town pays 50% of our taxes to the police and this is what we get..."
My most reactionary opinions all center around excessive noise production and especially outside of "normal" and "acceptable" times. Like if a concert is planned nearby a year in advance and vibrates the ground around me until 2am and then abruptly ends and people fuck off- I actually don't give a shit. If it's Wednesday at 3am and Cletus and Jebediah are driving their (illegally) modified-exhaust, ear-splitting, coal-rolling small-dicked diesel trucks around shooting bottlerockets at each other. I just start thinking about summary executions at that point... and I'm barely exaggerating there btw.
I get it
My neighbors blast Metallica at 4 in the morning as they peel off in their jeeps for work
I assume it's for work anyway