Spoil sport?

We’re sitting chatting to friends at the golf club. One of the staff comes in. She’s been trying on her fancy dress for the children’s Halloween party. Her hair is black with grey white streaks & ends. Her face is whitened. Her eyes encircled in heavy black. Around her throat is attached something that gives the effect of someone who has had her throat slit. Her chest above the plunging neckline of her top is covered in rather shiny crimson to indicate the blood that has dripped from her slashed throat.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I suspect as a young child, & it is young children who are coming, that would be very scary.

I’m trying to convince myself I’m just being a spoil sport, but for me the whole celebration of Halloween, as done these days is a very American thing that has only recently been imported here.

I do once remember going to a Halloween party as a child, but that was just because it coincided with a friend’s birthday. We had squash lanterns. We bobbed for apples on string, ducked for apples in bowls of water, ate toffee apples but that was about it.

When I went to university in Hull in the 70s there was a tradition of mischief night. On Halloween people did silly things such as taking gates off hinges, nothing causing serious damage or frightening. I gathered that the custom was common in the north-east. We subsequently moved to Cumbria in the north-west & the custom abounds there too. There was never any dressing up, trick & treating, damage or scariness.

Not so today. We always put up a sign in the front window to say no treat or treating. We don’t like it. We don’t feel it has anything to do with the mediaeval “celebration” of witches, ghosts, ghouls, zombies, evil etc. being let loose to be redeemed by the All Saints’ Day the next day.

But now I see Halloween is even being stretched for several days. “Strictly Come Dancing”, a ballroom dance show, is going to have people dressed up as ghouls etc. today. It’s not even Halloween which is just one night, October 31. It’s all going too far & getting silly, sometimes scary enough to give nightmares to young children.