It occurred to me tonight that this is my first proper Halloween for quite a while. Last year it fell on a Saturday and I was in the pub and previous to that I was living in areas where there aren’t many families, and if there are they tend not to let their kids out after dark to go knocking on strangers front door. Currently I’m living in suburbia, real suburbia with families and everything. They do things differently here.
At about 7pm there’s the first knock on the door. I open it to see three short people in masks wailing “trick or treat”. Rather surprised I pop into the kitchen, realise we have nothing resembling candy, and drop some shrapnel from my pocket into their bags. Ten minutes later another knock on the door, another three short people in masks and the rest of my shrapnel has gone. Total outlay: about 67p. And it’s kinda cute, bringing back memories of when I used to do this as a kid. But I now have no money (I doubt they’d change a tenner) and no sweets. I could give them some mini-comics but I suspect their parents wouldn’t really approve so I’m a little stuck.
I pop up to Sam’s room to inform her of my dilemma and am slightly taken aback by her hostile, somewhat Scrooge-like approach to the whole event. As the evening progresses I start to understand why as our door is knocked again and again. We don’t answer, Sam on principle, me because I have nothing to placate these tiny demons and the implicit threat of a “trick” seems best dealt with by the illusion of absence rather than a pleading of poverty. Added to this the knocks are getting heavier, the murmuring voices deeper. These are not sweet little kids any more – these are the teenagers, the morally lost, socially dispossessed gits who hang outside the off license letting off fireworks.
I’m reminded again that I generally want nothing to do with the local community of Sun reading idiots and their cold-eyed offspring. I’m reminded that while my house is decent, my housemate cool and my rent cheap I really don’t like living in this area, not so much that I feel the need to leave any time soon, just in the way that I feel I have nothing in common with the residents.
In other news the first absurd Christmas decorations went up on our street last week. Come December every other house will be plastered in the tackiest of tacky flashing lights and Sam and I will laugh, regaling each other with sightings of aesthetic atrocities. But the laughter disguises a fear that there is no irony here, no knowing winks. There’s something else afoot, something I will never understand or comprehend.
April answered the door. “Trick or Treat” the kids cried out in unison. “Trick or treat? what does that mean, we’ve been living abroad” (failing to mention where we lived abroad is the land of trick or treat). Well they got an orange each – no candy in the house, naturally. April calls it begging and does not condone it much. If they dress up and are small kids, it’s OK with me. Teenagers ought to know better. Teenagers who think that trick means petty vandalism probably don’t know better.
Or am I simply getting old?
Sadly the traditional British ‘Samhain’ has been turned into a dumbed down tacky commercial holiday. :(
Dave C – the traditional holidays – Samhain, Yule, Eostra, etc. were first dumbed down by Christian missionaries who realized that “if you can’t beat them, join them”. Then the card people got involved. Then the costume people. Is it any wonder that more and more people are turning back the clock to pagan values?
Lost me there so I looked it up. Wikipedia entries for Samhain and Eostre.
If you can find an English Book of Common Prayer, there will be a section that explains which day Easter Sunday will fall. The basis for this is, of course, the lunar cycle (derived from pagan religion) but the early Christians in northern Europe couldn’t admit to this, So they invented the “Golden Letter”. Only “they” knew the significance of the Golden Letter but let everyone believe it was a heaven-sent guide from above. From memory, I believe Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the full moon following the Spring Equinox. Of course this was also pre-empted historically by the Jewish calendar that defined Passover in the same (lunar) way. Nonetheless, Easter is, by its name, a deritive of paganism, not jewry. You won’t find Easter mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Christ’s death and resurrection are only mentioned in context to the Jewish calendar.
If all this sounds rather esoteric, I apologize. After I first visited the Rollrite Stones I found the history of religion in England to be a fascinating topic.
I gave some herbal teabags. They didn’t seem to mind.
I think the kids round here would assume I’m giving them drugs or just not have a clue what “herbal tea” is.