This originally was a reply to someone else's post about how "Halloween adults are as bad as Disney adults" but I decided to split it off because I wasn't exactly addressing the idea of Halloween+consumerism...
I am a Halloween expansionist, which is to say that more festivities in the UK should involve providing food and drink to whoever knocks on your door, and also that it should be the norm for adults to do something akin to trick-or-treating.
And this isn't just wild wishing, because it was the case for hundreds of years! Across the whole of Great Britain (as in, different countries and regions had different ones of these traditions at different times) we've had wassailing, soulcaking, guising (In the North East of England and much of Scotland, trick-or-treat is still called guising!), firstfooting, and the various White Horse traditions which include both my beloved Old Tup (who is a sheep, not a horse) and the internationally-famous Welsh Mari Lwyd, as well as a dozen more. When you sing "And bring us some figgy pudding/we won't go until we get some" in We Wish You A Merry Christmas, that is about wassailers or carollers, singing for pudding or brandy on the doorstep of a big house.
All, broadly, festivities where groups of locals would go door-to-door collecting up more people, food, alms, drinking and dancing as they go, often in costumes that at least symbolically hid their identities, and embodied a spirit.
And we should do it, not just because it's traditional but because it brings you into a community- If you all dress up, you all have to participate with your neighbours rather than with your chosen-friends, you all have to give freely and recieve with grace, and all have to be silly with each other, and trust each other with your silly hearts... That's beautiful.
