Tuesday 1st November

Halloween really is a nasty little invention, which thanks to our American cousins has become an industry in itself; the supermarkets have been full of costumes, masks, witches hats and at the last minute pumpkins, carved and ready to carve, and even tubs of sweets with which to regale the little monsters when they appear at your door.  Well not at my door; when the inevitable charade begins, almost as soon as it starts to get dark it seems, and carrying on far too late into the night; you are confronted with usually two or three young people, sometimes with parents in tow, in masks and costumes bought with those same parents hard earned cash, screeching at you “Trick or Treat”, I quietly say, “Not at this house, thank-you,” and close my door. I don’t suppose for one moment that I am the only one, or that it will mar their fun for a moment, but I don’t see why I should join in this American nonsense, I didn’t ask for these unwanted visitors and I refuse to encourage them.

And what sort of a lesson is it teaching the children; to pester people into giving them sweets which will rot their teeth (with the veiled threat implied if you refuse), to dress up in macabre outfits and paint their faces like skeletons and devils which will either give them nightmares or encourage a fascination with all thing supernatural; not a good idea, evidence the incredible success of vampire television series and films, with their undercurrents of sex and death which are hardly the best ingredients to fill young minds with I would have thought.  But the real reason that I dislike Halloween so much is that has almost totally eclipsed our own Guy Fawkes’ night.  Our young children have no knowledge of their own history, instead they are being force-fed an American cultural import which has no real historical basis, just some nonsense about witches on the last night of October.

I can remember how it used to be on the few days leading up to Guy Fawkes, when small groups of kids would be seen pushing their guys, home made from pillow cases and stuffed discaded clothes (no mass-produced masks and cheap bright orange and black costumes in our day) in old prams or pushchairs and asking for a penny for the guy.  This was ostensibly for them to buy fireworks, but I suspect that they might have ended up buying sweets too, but there was a real community feel to Bonfire Night that with today’s organised firework displays is completely missing.

Maybe I am just a grumpy old woman but I am quite fed up with the way our culture is being swamped by MacDonalds and KFC and Hollywood films and cartoons; I may be fighting a one-woman war but despite what I really would like to say, I will continue to politely state “Not at this house, thank-you.”