Halloween is coming. When I was a kid in New York we looked forward to Halloween when we could dress up in costume and go door to door trick-or-treating. We would come home loaded up with sweets and spend the next day over-indulging in candy.
At least this is what American kids seemed to do. Being the first generation of Americans in my house, my brother and I didn't really get to participate in this pointless ritual since my parents couldn't begin to understand why we would want to beg from our neighbours when they would willingly buy us candy at any other time. Dressing up seemed such a frivolity that we never really did it.
One year I was allowed to go door-to-door on Halloween. Along with a small group of other children from my class we went round collecting money for Unicef. My parents could readily understand the point of this. Collecting for children in other countries who had less than we did was a familiar idea. Every meal time I was reminded of starving children in 'Europe' whenever I tried to leave food on my plate, so collecting for these poor children made sense to my parents and even had a nobility to it. I do also remember that along with the pennies we collected I finally got my thrilling share of sweets, but still no costume.
When I was about 10 years old there was a nationwide scare about poisoned or tampered- with Halloween candy. There was talk of apples with razor blades embedded in them, poisoned sweets and dangerous objects being given to children. In addition to that there were rumours about the dangers of letting children knock on strangers' doorways. All of this led to a new found nervousness and suspicion around the Halloween trick-or-treating and meant that adults began to accompany kids on their rounds and that candy couldn't be immediately eaten. It had to be carefully inspected first. Now it is clear that the stories of poisoned sweets and 'bad' people were just that, mythical stories and have now entered the American psyche as fact so that Halloween becomes a genuinely scary occasion for parents and children alike.
When my kids were small I remember helping them to make costumes and spending a bit of time sewing and scavenging materials so one could be the queen of hearts and the other could have a scythe and death mask to go with his black cloak. Even though I remember a few Halloween costumes for the kids Halloween was not much of an event in the UK. In the States there are huge displays of pumpkins, witches on broomsticks, carved jack-o-lanterns and row upon row of dressing up clothes sold in every conceivable shop. Here we used to ooh and ahh over the few kids who turned up at our door in bedsheets as little ghosts or wearing badly done face paint and it was a fairly rare occurrence.
Times have completely changed and suddenly the toy, candy and clothing manufacturers in the UK have embraced Halloween. Every shop has garish displays in orange and black, black cats, witches, fake blood and artificial talons seem to be everywhere. Sweets have now been conveniently packaged in tiny individual bags so you can hand them out to the gangs of kids who will show up at your door with their nervous parents hovering in the background.
When did we become so stupid? When did the world become such a commercialised mess. Halloween was originally connected to the mystical spiritual celebration of Samhain, the traditional end of light days and entry into the dark days. The wearing of scary costumes was part of the primitive strategy of warding off the bad spirits that might be in the air. Now there's a concept I can completely embrace. Tell me about it - I've been aware of the end of light days for years, but also Samhain was traditionally the night when the veil between the two worlds - the corporeal world and the spirit world- is at its thinnest and we can commune with those spirits. It is not an accident that the next day, 1 November, is the Day of the Dead in Mexico. It's the day when Mexican families honour their ancestors and go to picnics in cemeteries and connect with their departed families.
I think that since we live in a society that avoids looking at death or spirit in any way except the most sanitised it would make more sense to celebrate the Day of the Dead. I'm not sure though that there's candy involved, so it might be a harder sell.
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