Listeners, you're listening to the fluent mind english language learning podcast.
We are a content-based learning podcast and i'm here with my co-host, jack.
Today we're going to be talking about is halloween dead and my name is social, by the way, jack.
What do you think is halloween dead?
Um, that's a really good question.
I think um, in america it's like it's very much.
It has changed a lot.
Um yeah, and i think there's just a lot of like, like political reasons um, Cultural reasons.
Economic.
Economic reasons.
It all is tied together, right?
Yeah.
It's like it's a snowball.
You know everything affects everything else.
You know, because buying a costume for a kid is, you know, if you don't have a lot of extra money at this time when the government is like cutting a lot of benefits for people, like SNAP is a food assistance program that just got canceled recently.
And Medicare, I'm sorry, Medicaid, which is and Medicare as well.
I'm sorry.
Health insurance is getting really much more expensive.
And then we've got inflation in America because of the tariffs.
And you put all those three together.
It's like buying candy, buying costumes or saving your money to pay for your health care and just enough food to eat so you're not hungry anymore.
That's, that's going to really, I mean, where are you going to trim the fat?
You know you're going to go for like the the the, the extra, you know the bonus things, like like Halloween.
You know, just don't celebrate it.
Close your, turn your light off and shut your door and don't answer your door.
You know?
Yeah.
I think one of the biggest things too, is that like time is money gets so real.
Like everyone's working extra hours and two jobs or three jobs to make ends meet.
And like, That kind of kills the spirit because who has time to decorate?
Who has time to go out to the store and buy candy?
Can you afford to go out to the store and buy candy for trick-or-treaters?
Like you said, can you afford to either buy a costume or even make a costume secondhand?
You still have to buy all the materials, and then you have to spend extra time making it.
Right.
If you have two jobs, forget that.
Yeah, you definitely don't have to.
That's like the thing between a few extra hours of sleep so you can perform better at your shift and not get fired, or making a Halloween costume for your kid.
So you can put food on the table.
Who's winning, you know?
So I think that's a big killer.
Another thing is trunk or tree is apparently a thing.
And that's like um, just for our listeners out there and aren't familiar with the word trunk.
Trunk means like a car trunk or car boot, British style.
They say boot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So for the trunk of your car, like people just bring candy, and I guess they all park around in a parking lot and bring their kids and everyone just walks around.
The point is that so you can watch your kids.
So I don't know why people don't realize that you can just go trick or treating with your kids.
My parents didn't really do that because we lived in a super family centric, tight knit neighborhood that was like upper middle class really.
So you could just send your kids anywhere.
Pretty much it was safe.
Because there's kids and parents all over and neighbors that all know you.
So it was pretty safe.
But I would totally understand in urban areas or just like.
It's just such a representation of how disconnected we've become within our communities.
We don't know, you don't know your neighbors anymore.
I mean, you might know who lives next to you.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I agree with you 100%.
We've got.
We live in this like half the country is angry with the other half of the country because of for political reasons.
And then the, we've got, um, hundreds of millions of guns in the country.
And then you've got racism and you've got, um, I mean, you've got the wrong door.
Sorry.
You've got school shootings.
You've got, um, you know, we've got all this.
Yes.
And so it's sending your kids out to knock on a stranger's door, wearing a scary costume and, is objectively insane like that i wouldn't i would not let my kid do that um no i just yeah i mean i guess you know she does go trick-or-treating now that i think about it my daughter i think does go trick-or-treating in like a like a wealthy neighborhood in in florida or something but um it's under the guidance like supervision of the school and everything so it's it's very much like expected that people are going to come up to you kids are going to come up to your door and knock but you know in these in other like middle class neighborhoods it's just not the same country that it was uh 40 years ago when i was in the 1980s when i grew up you know middle class used to mean like affluent enough to get by and now middle class just affluent like extra money having extra money and now middle class means scraping by paycheck to paycheck i think Yeah, if you're just paycheck to paycheck, they still would put you in the middle class, but it's just that everything shifted down.
Except for the top 1% has gone way up.
The top 10 has done extremely well in the last 40 years and the middle class has done extremely poorly in the last 40 years.
And that's just a fact.
You can't even argue with the economics.
There's graph after graph showing the same thing.
So I think when economic insecurity becomes the norm, then little holidays like Valentine's Day and Halloween and those kind of little places where you might have spent like 50 bucks or something or 40 bucks extra, you're just not going to do it.
You're going to save the money.
Yeah, that's true.
But then everything gets a little bit blander and more boring in life.
Yeah, it's just all those little fun, little things that you used to used to enjoy about your country.
They just go away, you know.
And, uh, the culture is disappearing.
Yeah, it does.
It really does feel like it.
Like um yeah, I'm sure social media probably has and phones have some um responsibility with with that too.
But I just think like mostly it's just economics.
You know, it's just economics because think of like I grew up at a time when we all had our, we all had cell phones by that time and we still all went out and trick or treated.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's for candy.
You can't eat candy through your cell phone.
Yeah.
Kids love to hang out.
It doesn't matter if we have social media and stuff.
It's like a way to add a friend that can't come or something, but it's not like we didn't want to hang out with each other and get dressed up and go, you know, it just wasn't a thing.
We all wanted to go out and trick-or-treating and it's still a thing.
But again, I really do think the economics like even homeowners, like who owns homes now.
Right.
If you're renting and I just think all the little things that used to do, like Netflix and Disney Plus and stuff, people are going to start canceling those things.
People are going to stop buying Halloween candy.
They're going to stop buying costumes.
They're going to stop going out.
Just enough just to get by.
I think Halloween is kind of like a bellwether for those kinds of things.
Halloween and Valentine's Day and those things are like a bellwether that just kind of show like a um, a kind of like a warning sign for economic uh problems you know.
And I think this Halloween I guarantee there was it was probably down a lot as far as like um buying uh Halloween candy, things like that, you know, costumes.
I'm sure it was, we'll, we'll find out, you know, in the newspaper in the next week or so.
But um yeah, that's my, my.
My guess is that uh, people are spending a lot less on those kinds of things.
Um, And the middle class is the one that you know is the largest group of people are in the middle class, and so – or is in the middle class?
So that means they're spending the most on those kinds of things, right?
And so when the middle class is suffering, then everything kind of gets dragged down, you know.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
Do you have any last words about this or – No.
Just you know listeners, let us know how – maybe your fall cultures, like mid-autumn festival in china, um dia de los muertos in mexico and maybe other latin american countries.
How are those being affected by kind, of the global shift?
We're curious to know um.
Leave a comment down below.
Shoot us a message.
Um, we'd love to hear from you guys.
Yeah, we'd love to, and we're still using a to z english podcast at gmailcom is our, our email address and you can catch us on Apple podcasts or Spotify.
So yeah, have a great, happy Halloween.
If we, if you?
Well actually, I hope you had a happy Halloween, wherever you are, and we'll catch you next time.
Thanks everybody.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
