Halloween

Every year people in England complain about Halloween.  Trick or treating is a recent import from the US (they say); it encourages scroats to come out and demand money by threatening tricks, it is displacing native traditions like penny for the guy etc etc.

I know a lot of Christians have theological objections to "celebrating evil" at Halloween and try to subvert it with alternative "light parties".  I sympathise with them up to a point but this aspect of Halloween isn't a big deal as far as I am  concerned, I am quite happy to mock the bogeymen we fear  and don't see that as celebrating darkness itself.  I would draw the line at dressing myself or a child as a devil mind you, that would make me very uncomfortable, but vampires and ghosts are OK. 

So I was quite glad of an opportunity to experience a proper American Halloween: we dressed up and joined the family of a colleague who went out trick or treating with all three young children in costume.  Here's what I discovered:

(1) Halloween is a season here, not just a day.  Just as Christmas seems to start on 1 December for many people in the UK nowadays, Halloween starts on 1 October, and is marked by decorating houses and shops for an extended period of time.

(2) It is embedded into the culture much more widely than in England (no surprise there).

(3) On 31 October almost all the kids in the neighbourhood go trick or treating at the same time: the streets are quite busy.  People indicate they are up for a visit by decorating their houses, expect to be called on, and come prepared with sweets to hand out.  It reminded me very much of the scenes in ET.

(4) Costumes are not always scary, in fact many kids dress up as superheroes or Disney princesses.  Our own costumes involved masks which we didn't wear because the kids were too scared!  A shame because mine was V for Vendetta, an attempt to bridge the cultural divide with a reference to Guy Fawkes.

(5) It involves an awful lot of candy being given out, more than anyone can or should eat.  Most of it gets binned.  Some people really go to town; one local family whose house was decorated in a particularly elaborate fashion was giving out wine to the adults as well. 

So it appears that those people who say that something which is fun and culturally relevant in the USA has become something less pleasant in the UK may be right.  However it wasn't all roses.  For one thing any event involving over-excited small children and chocolate is only ever going to end in either tantrums or vomit.  And it doesn't seem much fun for the adults who just traipse around watching their kids (or in some places, apparently, drive their offspring from house to house!). In that respect Bonfire a Night is much more fun: burning stuff is fun for all ages, and adults can enjoy mulled wine around the fire, much more relaxing once the sparklers are all safely in a bucket of cold water.  So I had a lot of sympathy for the householders who were giving out wine, it would improve the tradition considerably in my view if it involved visiting neighbours and sharing adult hospitality, a bit like Hogmanay.

I also detected some attitudes similar to British ones.  We were trick or treating in a nice middle class area, but I heard some people saying that in some other areas the trick or treaters sometimes demand money.  There were also concerns about the age of the kids: five year olds in costume are cute at 6.30, teenagers at 10pm (whose tricks may be unpleasant) may be considered a nuisance or even a threat.  Most of the kids we met said "Happy Halloween" rather than "Trick or Treat", maybe this reduces the threat?  I did hear that in some areas the local councils had limited the hours for trick or treaters to prevent nuisance callers late at night.  Seems a bit unfair to me, if you make a big deal out of Halloween every year, you've got to expect teenagers to want to join in too.

But overall Halloween in the US did seem better, because more people buy into it.  Perhaps all it would take to make it work in the UK would be a shared understanding of its rules and values.  So maybe the people who complain and refuse to answer the door are a big part of the problem about which they complain?  However traditions have to grow naturally, we can't force Brits to celebrate Halloween like the Yanks any more than we can make them embrace bull-fighting or sumo wrestling.  I guess ultimately I blame the media for bombarding us with images from US TV, and the shops for trying to sell us US style Halloween products, it's their fault that we are stuck with a half-hearted imitation of an American institution.  Personally I have missed Bonfire Night this year and don't feel Halloween was anything like as much fun.