Stuff your pumpkins

[caddyman]

Oh yes. It’s Halloween tonight, isn’t it?

The BBC website has an article with the picturesque and accurate title “The Japanese Knotweed of Festivals” and they’re right.

The Scots have some tradition of celebrating Halloween with “Guising” whereby kids dress up and entertain people in return for gifts. As far as I am aware, most of England and Wales didn’t have such a thing until the mid 80s. At least it didn’t happen in our part of the world. Even when I was at college in the late 70s and early 80s, if you popped into the pub on Halloween, there might be a plastic bat hanging from the bar and that would be it.

Simply put, no matter how many kids wander around tonight ‘trick or treating’, it’s a recent import. And even any charm that bit might have had has largely been superseded by the sight of gangs of thuggish youths effectively demanding money with menaces.

I blame Steven Spielberg. Pretty much no-one knew about ‘Trick or Treat’ in England before ET the Extraterrestrial. That made people notice and then as the BBC points out, increasingly from the mid 80s onwards, the boom in satellite TV and day time terrestrial TV, meant that more and more US kids’ shows found their way into people’s homes and that meant more awareness of Halloween.

I’ll be staying away from the back door tonight and the lights will be off; a night’s TV or music or just about anything is called for.

What’s the Halloween version of “Bah, Humbug”?

Comments

[phil99.livejournal.com]

I used to have it great, 2nd floor flat meant nobody ever bothered you ;) I'm not so sure about it this year, though we're on a hideously busy road and I wouldn't hope to see any kids wandering along it :)

What’s the Halloween version of “Bah, Humbug”?

[paulcurtis.livejournal.com]

I dunno...perhaps "Burn her! She looks like a witch!"

[oldnick.livejournal.com]

What’s the Halloween version of “Bah, Humbug”?

"The police had been called - you';d better piss off before they get here (in the next two weeks, if they haven't classified your assault as a non-violent offence)"

[delvy.livejournal.com]

I hate it...

[sack-boy.livejournal.com]

A few years back the local small creatures tried "T or T"ing in the neighbourhood. As a result of the complaints their parents received they now only "T or T" the homes that contain these small creatures. That is a vast improvement.

On the other hand the annual appearance of goth chick witches in short skirts and fishnets about town is a welcome sight ;o)

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's that recent - both my Mum and my Nan have referred to not being allowed to do it when they were kids. I always assumed that it was one of the older forms of supposedly legitimate extortion - hey, let's all teach our kids how to run a protection racket at an early age!

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I don't think the whole of Hallowe'en celebrations are that recent either. I was a kid in the 80s when we went round saying 'happy hallowe'en' to our neigbours and getting spare change. It was really good fun and no one minded. But then I lived in a community, not a collection of isolated miserable barstewards.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I'm sure your Mum and Nan were not allowed to do many things when they were kids,that doesn't necessarily mean everyone else did it, either. Trick or treat as we see it now is a recent import, Halloween is clearly not.

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm sure your Mum and Nan were not allowed to do many things when they were kids,that doesn't necessarily mean everyone else did it, either.

It certainly means that there was an appreicable group of people doing it though.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I don't see that that is necessarily true. If a kid is specifically not allowed to go for country walks at 3am, it doesn't follow that an appreciable number of others are.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

I find the idea of kids knocking on your door to scare you very amusing Pete, sorry but I do, I just have an image of you leaping from behind the sofa in all your many-angled glory, dressed as a lloigor, sweets grasped in your squamous paw.

A cthuloid halloween, now that I can get on board with.

Hehehehehe

[the-hooded-crow.livejournal.com]

I have fond memories of swede-carving (pumpkins weren't easily available so we carved swedes or turnips instead - and they were right swines to carve too..), apple bobbing, and making gingerbread for Hallowe'en when I was a kid in the late Seventies. And we used to dress up and go trick-or-treating too, definitely before ET made it popular.

[boredinsomniac.livejournal.com]

They ask for money? Don't blame that on the US :) Some little kids bring United Nations Children's Fund donation boxes along with their candy buckets, but other than that, no one gives or asks for money.

[nortysarah.livejournal.com]

I blessed my mum last night and er blackout curtains as I heard two rabbles of children knock on the doors either side, but obviously missing our house maybe because they heard my deat rattle, but more likely because they thought we were out because even though we were sitting in the front room, the blackout curtains weren't letting out any light! Hoorah