Sadly, Halloween is Nearly a Non-Event in North London

Halloween has come and gone without one ring of our doorbell. I painted a pumpkin decoration for the front door and turned on the lights.  Brian collected various odds and ends in a basket and put it in the front hall. Honey couldn't be bothered putting together a costume or carving a pumpkin this year. Pip dressed in black and put on a plastic cape, but wouldn't let me paint his face like a vampire.  He went trick or treating with the boy  next-door and they were back in ten minutes.  He collected 94 pence, a few unwrapped gummy sweets, a few hard candies which we immediately threw in the bin, and  a few chocolates. So few that I actually let him eat them all tonight.

Sometimes I really lament the lack of enthusiasm for pure fun among the English.  Ok, I know I'll get in trouble for that, but it's sort of true. There; I've said it.  I can't speak for the rest of the UK, because I don't know what they do, but in the 14 years that I have lived in England, the farthest they have progressed toward embracing Halloween is having sweets, decorations and flimsy costumes on supermarket shelves.  It all gets marked down the day after Halloween and is presumably lost in peoples' closets because there is no evidence of their use. In our neighbourhood, most of the houses are pitch dark, so all you see is the light of their TV through the curtains.

Actually, I was cheered that my children's primary school allowed them to go in dressed in costumes on the last day before the half-term. However, we didn't hear any of the kids in the playground discussing their costumes and where they wanted to trick-or-treat and what they like the most in their pumpkin-shaped bags.  Not like when I was a child in the States at all.

Oh no! I must launch a warning: I am getting nostalgic. Look away RIGHT NOW if you can't bear it.

When I was young (yes, that long ago) my brothers and I had handmade costumes out of fabric, not nylon and plastic.  I particularly remember a white nurse's outfit, complete with starched cap and stethescope, and a set of colourful clown costumes.  We went around as a group with the boys at the corner, supervised by a parent or two.  I remember getting homemade cookies and polished apples along with the chocolates and Tootsie-Pops.  That was before the police issued a warning that some terrible people might put razorblades in the apples (Why? Why would anyone do that to children?).  After that, we weren't allowed to eat any sweets in the darkness. We had to empty them out on the carpet at home and have them checked by our parents.

When I moved to a new town at the age of ten, with less traffic and an altogether safer feel to the streets, we would set out from our house and call to all the other ghosts, vampires, cowboys and ballerinas as we recognized who was under the costume. Sometimes we would join groups, so that when someone answered their door, ten or more children shouted "Trick or treat, trick or treat, Give us something good to eat!"  Once I was twelve, we roamed the streets without a parent.  The Adams Family must have been popular then, because my friend Alison and I both dressed as a female version of Cousin It, combing our long hair over our faces and topping it with a pair of joke sunglasses.  When we saw friends, we traded information about the goodies we collected. "Go to that house...they are giving cans of Coke," or "that one has Reece's Peanut Butter Cups."

I know that childhood has changed since my days; My 10-year old's blase attitude about Halloween didn't happen with me and my friends until we were fifteen.  I must ask my friends in the States how it is with their children. However, I think that if it was really made fun by the adults here in England, any child would be happily swept up in the spirit of the holiday. I will say that Honey remembers her only American Halloween experience, when we were visiting my parents, very clearly and still mentions it. She was three years old at the time; seven years ago.

You may have guessed that I feel the same way about Valentine's Day.  It's pure fun, a good excuse for a special gesture: the excitement of getting an anonymous card on your desk at school, a rose from your boyfriend or a romantic dinner with your husband.  Perhaps my family went further with it than other people.  I received a little Valentine's Day gift from my parents until I was 20 years old.  A tinkly silver heart-shaped paperweight from my parents sits on my desk next to me.  Two heart-shaped pudding ramekins are in my kitchen cupboard and heart-shaped cookie cutters await the special day.  To this day, I send cards to both of my parents, as do my children. 

Brian and I exchange cards.  They are easy enough to find these days, but we have to buy our Valentine's cards To Mom, To Dad and To Grandma and Papa in the States and bring them back to England for the following year, as they aren't even sold here. If I mention this to people here, they look at me suspiciously, as if this is just another invented American holiday trying to gain a foothold in the Mother Country. Maybe it is. What's wrong with something that makes us smile and involves chocolate?

Comments

[Janice Robertson]

Hi Lisa, Yes, unfortunately we only got one set of trick or treaters this year. They arrived quite later with their parents. Great costumes and they were delighted when I screamed. I bought a big tin of Quality Street and practically gave them the whole lot as it was so late in the evening.

When I was little in Scotland it was a really big event.Parents were able to safely let their kids out on their own and we came back with sackfuls of peanuts in their shells, toffee apples, oranges and apples sweets. Of course, you can't give nuts nowadays. Why are so many people allergic to nuts these days? Or is it that people were allergic and they didn't know what it was?

Anyway, I do love Halloween and these sort of occasions where people can have fun and it brings the community together.

Janice x

[Lisa]

Hi Janice,
I would take back what I said about the English, but you have given me an out by having grown up in Scotland. Having sweets by the door, ready for hordes of witches and goblins, just shows that you and I live in hope.
Late last night, I remembered something done here that the U.S. does not.

In the UK, children's "fancy dress" costumes are available in stores year-round and are often worn just for play dates and birthday parties. I am always amused by seeing Cinderella, Batman and ballerinas out and about with their parents.

Having pleaded and cajoled shop clerks (even the Disney store) in New Jersey in August, to look in their stock room for anything left from the previous Halloween, I whinged at that end about the good sense of English retailers.
So, maybe I just need something about which to get in a twist.

[Janice Robertson]

I think you do have a point I loved Halloween when I was a child and I'm sure children still do now. Feels like they are missing out on such a lot of fun by not trick or treating.

Parents could always accompany their children for safety.