I’m not very keen on Halloween. Even as a child I felt uncomfortable at the amount of enthusiasm directed at holding my head down in a tub of water. And why should I run around in the freezing cold begging for sweets when I could steal them from my sisters.
To me it represents a time of year when we all become suicidal. When trees lose their leaves and are left gnarly and knobbly like a witch’s broomstick. When we’re so desperate for light we stick candles inside pumpkins and when we’re so sick of our children we make them run past naked flames in flammable costumes.
It does have respectable roots, having started as a Celtic festival with proper scary animal sacrifice. They believed the dead revisited on October 31st so they left offerings for them on the front doorstep. Then the Celt expats in America got so bored waiting around for Thanksgiving and boasting about the size of their pumpkins they decided to kick off trick or treat.
Now its become a massive commercial enterprise, raking in an estimated 6 billion dollars in America. Proper scary has been exchanged for family friendly so that weary, depressed, light deprived parents are hoodwinked into buying all the must have paraphernalia for their screeching kids.
And here we are – some of us excitedly buying up fake cobwebs, nylon black dresses and cheap sweets while curmudgeonly old witches like me sit here in our rocking chairs, flinging frogs into bubbling cauldrons whilst hoping desperately the dead Mother in law doesn’t come a knocking at the door.
