"Nowadays, Halloween means work. Being booked into conventions, film festival appearances, being asked to attend screenings, appear with bands, etc. Even if the months on either side of Oct 31st are barren, work-free deserts, I know that the end of October will be busy even in the years to come. I’m now used to the costumes and pumpkins that make-up the traditional US celebrations, but it wasn’t always so…
I grew up as a child of the 70’s, and it was
interesting to see the changes wrought upon British society by one film and the
envy felt by every child in Britain for the child protagonists of this 1982
release. Yes we were all jealous of E.T.’s Elliot and his friends and siblings.
Whilst he may have had an extraterrestrial in the closet, it was the way the
adults in their life indulged them in the carnevalesque spectacle of begging
that was ‘trick or treat’. All the masks and costumes seemed to spring from the
back pages of Fangoria. These were
quality latex items, not dodgy knock-offs from Woolies. And they were going from door-to-door in
expectation AND ACTUALLY GETTING FREE STUFF!!! What madness was this? I know it
was only a movie, but such culturally inbred generosity seemed alien to this
Northern lad whose neighbours would probably just close the door with a firm
“No thank you, none today” and the kind of warm greeting usually reserved for
Jehova’s Witnesses and gypsy knife-sharpers. How my 12-year-old self scoffed at
such sheer fantasy!
Noooo. Growing up in the UK, our Halloweens
were more in touch with the country’s pagan roots as part of a tryptich of
festive nights culminating in Bonfire Night on the 5th November. Mischief
Night often tended to occur the night before Halloween. It was a time for
children to play pranks and make nuisances of themselves. This ‘mischief’ would
range from ‘tap-and-go-run’ through to arson, vandalism and joy-riding. The
exact date of Mischief Night could vary from town to town, region to region, or
(as in Appley Bridge where I grew up) not really happen at all (although I
doubt that it was because we were all too well behaved).
I should also explain (for the colonial
audience) that Bonfire Night, five days after Halloween, is a celebration of
James I surviving a catholic plot to blow up Parliament (with him in it). So
now the tradition is to build bonfires around the country upon which to burn
effigies of Guy (Guido) Fawkes - the most famous of the plotters (yes, even if
you are a Catholic)- and set off fireworks. The festivity has lost most of its
sectarian overtones, although some places in the UK burn effigies of the Pope,
the US president, or other current hate-figures (including an effigy of a
caravan of Gypsies, including ‘children’ at the windows, in one particularly
outrageous incident of recent years). Anyway, for most people today Bonfire
Night involves attending a ‘Health & Safety’ approved organized firework
display and bonfire whilst standing around eating toffee apples, treacle
toffee, parkin (a treacle-based sponge cake often eaten with butter/spread).
But Halloween…. Halloween was always a combination of media-driven celebration
of horror (readings of the Robbie Burns poems Halloween and Tam O’Shanter, TV channels cramming their schedules with
Halloween-themed programs, a chance to dust off a couple of old
Hammer/Universal/Amicus films, and radio stations vying with one another how
many times they could play The Monster Mash in a single day) and hang-over from
the pagan festival of Samhain.
As I said above, before E.T. there was no such
thing as ‘trick or treat.’ Children only got dressed up as ghosts and ghouls if
they were going to a fancy dress party. It wasn’t until E.T. explained the
notion of ‘going trick-or-treating’ that I realised the improbably rich kids on
US TV sitcoms probably weren’t heading off to preternaturally urbane soirees
peopled by similarly privileged kids in their expensive costumes. No, they were leaving their improbably huge
apartments overlooking Central Park in order to beg from their neighbours and
doormen. At least E.T. showed working/lower middle-class kids going out and
explained the notion of ‘trick or treat’.
We’d watch TV, play games, and maybe go out
to a fancy-dress party (although very few people bothered to do more than don a
cardboard mask). I remember one such party when my sister and I went with our
friends next door to their grandmother’s house. As a child I lived in
Skelmersdale before moving to Appley Bridge/Wigan, and our neighbours were
similarly from Skelmersdale (or Skem). Skem was a newtown built in Lancashire
for the overflow population of Liverpool. The neighbours’ grandma was a tough,
hardy woman who fostered children and made a big fuss of events like Halloween.
When we arrived, it was exciting; all these strangers, the house decorated with
Silly-string cobwebs and cardboard skeletons hanging from the door, rubber bats
swinging from the ceiling. We’d brought along the lanterns we’d made by
hollowing out small turnips (yes, that’s what Halloween lanterns are traditionally
made from here), carving a devilish grin in them, and placing a thick candle stub
inside. We put them on the mantelpiece alongside the others people had brought.
There were decorated cakes, Dracula ice lollies (black with a red raspberry
centre), bowls of Monster Munch (over-sized corn-snacks in the shape of clawed
feet), gummi snakes, and gingerbread in the shape of vampire bats. The place
was full with us, the grandma’s current foster children, and teenagers that she
had fostered in their earlier childhood. Other than masks and horror-themed
T-shirts, I can only remember one person in fancy dress. They were wrapped in
rolls of toilet paper as some sort of Kleenex-sponsered ‘Mummy’. There was
music – The Monster Mash (of course), The Addams Family theme tune, The Big
Purple People Eater, etc. And then the games!
The games were traditional Oct 31st
fare. Ducky Apple in which apples were placed in a bowl of water, and the
person whose turn it was would, blindfolded and with hands tied behind them, bend over the bowl
and try to take one of the apples using only their mouth. Obviously this would
involve dunking one’s head in the water, so someone would have a towel to hand.
Similarly, there was Bobby Apple (it WAS Skem after all, most people had a
scouse accent, so most nouns had a ‘-y’ added to the end of them) where the
player (similarly hindered as in Ducky Apple) had to eat an apple dangling from
the ceiling on a length of string down to its core, without using their hands.
Obviously this was all before ’50 Shades of Grey’ came out, so no-one saw
anything kinky about blindfolding and binding children. Both games also seemed
to harken back to the witch-hunts of the Middle Ages; dunking the suspected
witch in water to see if she drowned (if so she was innocent, and dead) and
hanging being punishments for those found guilty of witchcraft. I’m not sure
that there was a ‘tying an apple to a wooden stick and burning it’ game, but
who knows? It may well be the origin of
‘toffee apples’ and their crispy hard candy shells.
Things didn’t immediately change with the
release of E.T., but by a couple of Halloweens later there were teenagers out in twos and threes
going around (not in fancy dress, just hoodies and shell suits) knocking on
doors ‘trick or treating’, and year by year it gradually became more enmeshed
in British culture (as legislation around safety and fireworks tightened,
restricting the celebrations of Bonfire Night). And now, we’re all expected to
stock up on sweets and chocolates to have in a container by the door as mums
and dads walking their children around the neighbourhood begging."
30 days 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. 30 days 'til Halloween, Silver Shamrock!
1 comment:
I still have yet to see the second Human Centipede flick. Need to correct that...
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