Fright Nights

Halloween eh, what fun. I got completely swept up in it all, especially the putting to work of young children - if you ask me the outlawing of juvenile chimney sweeps in England in 1840 was a damn shame. But in the sweep’s absence we now employ child labour in a quest to amass large amounts of sweets, or as you folks say, candy that we know only too well almost all of will be confiscated from little Johnny et al after the event. Genius.

I duly decked out my darling boy in a mummy costume, and, bucket in hand, he ‘trick or treated’ his way up and down Highland Street. Or, to be honest, he ‘treated’, as at only 16 months old he can’t quite get his molar (singular) around the whole phrase just yet.

And, the little fella did good. There is now a large jar of confectionary hidden high up in a cupboard where only his mother and I can reach it. Well, we can’t have him eating those sugar coated treats can we; else his one molar will fall out before he’s even got a good chew from it!

Now, all of this ghoulish frivolity is new to me. Halloween wasn’t really celebrated in England back when I was a boy. It is getting much bigger now though, as is the NBA - the Timberwolves played the Lakers in a season opener in London this year – and suing McDonalds because we’ve eaten too many burgers and now weigh 350 lbs! 

But I digress. Never having donned a bed sheet with holes for eyes and gone out on a pre-teen ‘terror’ spree I was keen to find out all about Halloween. So, pressing your kids into candy gathering aside, what’s it all about?

I’m reliably informed by the local folk that Halloween has its roots in Celtic folklore and the festival of Samhain, which celebrated the bridge between lighter and darker halves of the year. At this time the border between our world and the Otherworld is supposedly thin and spirits good and bad can pass through.

Sounds like someone’s cribbing from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to me.

Then, there are those who say Halloween is derived from the Catholic All Souls Day. A time to pray for the departed who haven’t quite made it to heaven: the ones stuck in limbo because they kicked a dog, or had less than righteous thoughts about the neighbour’s 18 year old daughter after she knocked at their door dressed in a little red devil costume and purred trick or treat, mister!

Whether its roots are religious or pagan Halloween seems like a load of old hokum to me, dreamed up by some American marketing man in order to sell vast quantities of ghoul masks and candy.

Now as mentioned, back in Blighty, Halloween is not yet as big an event as it is here. We can’t waste our time on petty fright-nights and dressing up is silly costumes, you see. No, we have more serious things to commemorate, namely Guy Fawkes Night.

On November 5^th 1605 (yep, some proper olde worlde history comin’ up) the aforementioned Mr Fawkes and a few of his Catholic chums tried to blow up Protestant King James I. The gunpowder plot was foiled though, the King saved and everyone celebrated: well, everyone except Fawkes and his mates; they were taken from the Tower of London and executed on January 31^st, 1606.

By execution, I mean Fawkes and Co had their genitals cut off and burnt before their eyes before having their bowels and hearts removed. Then they were decapitated and the dismembered parts of their bodies dispersed to the corners of the kingdom as fair warning to other would-be traitors.

And we celebrate this? We jolly well do. There’s nothing like a good decapitation, after genital removal of course, to get us Brits in the party mood. We don’t do anything fancy, though; just build a large bonfire and sit an effigy of Fawkes (which our darling children have made) on top of it. Then, smiling families gather together, toffee apples and mulled wine in hand, to watch Mr. Fawkes burn, slowly; the flames first licking around his ankles before catching light to his clothes and roasting him alive. HOOHAAHAAHAAHAAAAAA!!!

And you think Halloween is scary!