Halloween’s is gaining popularity all across the world. It%s a great evening for dressing up in silly costumes and acting the fool. This year nightclubs across Holland will host Halloween parties, where you can get your costume and your freak on.
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With a seemingly never-ending stream of plastic cultural crap spewing out of America every day, it’s nice to be able to report on at least one great US export: Halloween. Not an “official” holiday, having nothing to do with religion, ethnicity, high culture…
Halloween is simply about dressing up in ghoulishly ridiculous costumes and having fun. Halloween is, as advertisers like to say, fun for the whole family%even if your family includes mad Muslim mullahs or humorless Christian fundamentalists. After all, what could possibly be wrong with cutting eye-holes in a
bed-sheet and running around like a ghost, yelling, ‘Boo!’?
Originally, Halloween did have religious significance. Coming on October 31st, it was known as All Hallows Eve, a holy evening observed on All Saints Day eve. Further back, the ancient Celts and Anglo Saxons celebrated it as a fire festival, lighting
fires on surrounding hilltops to frighten evil spirits on Halloween night, a night when the souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes. From this, Halloween acquired its dark-side, with ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, black cats, fairies, and demons roaming about on the night.
Today, though, this night-of-the-living-dead stuff is thoroughly candy-coated and commercialized, watched over by Halloween’s ever-present symbol, the Jack-o’-lantern, a hollowed-out pumpkin with a demonic face carved into it and a lighted candle inside.
For American kids, Halloween night is for “trick-or-treating”, when kids show up at the neighbors’ doors dressed in funny costumes and demand candy, yelling “trick or treat” when the doors open. “Trick-or-treat” is meant as an offer neighbors can’t
refuse; that is, give me a treat or I’ll play a trick on you.
For little kids, shouting “trick-or-treat” is a formality; but for older teens, more into mayhem than Mars bars, playing tricks (i.e. light vandalism) is what Halloween’s all about. “Tricks” include stealing candy bags from helpless little kids, throwing rolls of toilet paper into trees, or, more hardcore, “egging”, stealthily hurling raw eggs at unpopular neighbors’ homes or indiscriminately at passing cars, ruining the paint-jobs of both.
So, with its Celtic roots, modern day Halloween’s theme remains horror and scary, and to Celtic ghosts and goblins we add our modern day monsters, like Frankenstein, Dracula… and Richard Nixon, whose rubber Halloween mask remains a best-seller in the US. Anyone or anything sufficiently scary or freakish is worthy
of a Halloween costume, so be that Pim Fortuyn zombie, head shaved an Uncle Fester ghoulish grey, and get down with the other living dead on the dance floor.
Halloween is party time for big kids too. Bars and nightclubs will host special Halloween night parties, or Monster Bash’s. And if you can’t make it to New York City, (where the Gowanus Yacht Club’sHalloween Party (323 Smith St.) is the place to be this year), be sure to hit one of the Halloween parties happening
around Holland.
In Delft, on Nov. 2nd at 23:30, the Apollo theatre hosts a pre-premiere of “Halloween Ressurection,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis. On November 6th, the mathematics/informatics study club, Christiaan Huygens, hosts a ‘Halloween commission bar’, featuring
mysterious drinks, gothic atmosphere, and pumpkins, at the /pub on Mekelweg 4, starting at 16.00
In Amsterdam on October 31, the Paradiso nightclub hosts a Halloween Party Ball (more info, www.paradiso.nl), and it’s Halloween party time at café “Twins” (Rembrandt Square, Amsterdam), from 20:00 to 4 a.m. Amsterdam’s Hard Rock Café also hosts a Halloween bash on Oct 31, starting at 21:00, costumes
required. Or, check out the Halloween Weekend Party, November 1-3, at nightclub, “You II” (Amstel 178).
In Rotterdam, Hollywood Music Hall’s “Halloween Party!” is on Oct. 31, the dress-code is Scary, Horror & Halloween. Ladies get free cocktails until 1 a.m.
Rotterdam’s Big Ben café is hosting a Halloween long weekend, running from Thursday October 31 to November 2nd.
Saturday night features a “Best Halloween Costume” competition (prize: dinner for two).
Finally, in Huizen, “538 I Dance” nightclub hosts a Halloween
Party Night on Nov. 2nd, featuring a variety of atmospheric Halloween dance rooms and DJs. Dresscode: very scary, the best costume winning VIP treatment for two.
If, however, partying isn’t your thing, stay home and watch Nederland 2’s “Slaughter Night”, with horror movie classic ‘Halloween’ starting at midnight, followed by ‘Braindead’.
Halloween’s is gaining popularity all across the world. It%s a great evening for dressing up in silly costumes and acting the fool. This year nightclubs across Holland will host Halloween parties, where you can get your costume and your freak on.
With a seemingly never-ending stream of plastic cultural crap spewing out of America every day, it’s nice to be able to report on at least one great US export: Halloween. Not an “official” holiday, having nothing to do with religion, ethnicity, high culture…
Halloween is simply about dressing up in ghoulishly ridiculous costumes and having fun. Halloween is, as advertisers like to say, fun for the whole family%even if your family includes mad Muslim mullahs or humorless Christian fundamentalists. After all, what could possibly be wrong with cutting eye-holes in a
bed-sheet and running around like a ghost, yelling, ‘Boo!’?
Originally, Halloween did have religious significance. Coming on October 31st, it was known as All Hallows Eve, a holy evening observed on All Saints Day eve. Further back, the ancient Celts and Anglo Saxons celebrated it as a fire festival, lighting
fires on surrounding hilltops to frighten evil spirits on Halloween night, a night when the souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes. From this, Halloween acquired its dark-side, with ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, black cats, fairies, and demons roaming about on the night.
Today, though, this night-of-the-living-dead stuff is thoroughly candy-coated and commercialized, watched over by Halloween’s ever-present symbol, the Jack-o’-lantern, a hollowed-out pumpkin with a demonic face carved into it and a lighted candle inside.
For American kids, Halloween night is for “trick-or-treating”, when kids show up at the neighbors’ doors dressed in funny costumes and demand candy, yelling “trick or treat” when the doors open. “Trick-or-treat” is meant as an offer neighbors can’t
refuse; that is, give me a treat or I’ll play a trick on you.
For little kids, shouting “trick-or-treat” is a formality; but for older teens, more into mayhem than Mars bars, playing tricks (i.e. light vandalism) is what Halloween’s all about. “Tricks” include stealing candy bags from helpless little kids, throwing rolls of toilet paper into trees, or, more hardcore, “egging”, stealthily hurling raw eggs at unpopular neighbors’ homes or indiscriminately at passing cars, ruining the paint-jobs of both.
So, with its Celtic roots, modern day Halloween’s theme remains horror and scary, and to Celtic ghosts and goblins we add our modern day monsters, like Frankenstein, Dracula… and Richard Nixon, whose rubber Halloween mask remains a best-seller in the US. Anyone or anything sufficiently scary or freakish is worthy
of a Halloween costume, so be that Pim Fortuyn zombie, head shaved an Uncle Fester ghoulish grey, and get down with the other living dead on the dance floor.
Halloween is party time for big kids too. Bars and nightclubs will host special Halloween night parties, or Monster Bash’s. And if you can’t make it to New York City, (where the Gowanus Yacht Club’sHalloween Party (323 Smith St.) is the place to be this year), be sure to hit one of the Halloween parties happening
around Holland.
In Delft, on Nov. 2nd at 23:30, the Apollo theatre hosts a pre-premiere of “Halloween Ressurection,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis. On November 6th, the mathematics/informatics study club, Christiaan Huygens, hosts a ‘Halloween commission bar’, featuring
mysterious drinks, gothic atmosphere, and pumpkins, at the /pub on Mekelweg 4, starting at 16.00
In Amsterdam on October 31, the Paradiso nightclub hosts a Halloween Party Ball (more info, www.paradiso.nl), and it’s Halloween party time at café “Twins” (Rembrandt Square, Amsterdam), from 20:00 to 4 a.m. Amsterdam’s Hard Rock Café also hosts a Halloween bash on Oct 31, starting at 21:00, costumes
required. Or, check out the Halloween Weekend Party, November 1-3, at nightclub, “You II” (Amstel 178).
In Rotterdam, Hollywood Music Hall’s “Halloween Party!” is on Oct. 31, the dress-code is Scary, Horror & Halloween. Ladies get free cocktails until 1 a.m.
Rotterdam’s Big Ben café is hosting a Halloween long weekend, running from Thursday October 31 to November 2nd.
Saturday night features a “Best Halloween Costume” competition (prize: dinner for two).
Finally, in Huizen, “538 I Dance” nightclub hosts a Halloween
Party Night on Nov. 2nd, featuring a variety of atmospheric Halloween dance rooms and DJs. Dresscode: very scary, the best costume winning VIP treatment for two.
If, however, partying isn’t your thing, stay home and watch Nederland 2’s “Slaughter Night”, with horror movie classic ‘Halloween’ starting at midnight, followed by ‘Braindead’.
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