…I stop to contemplate my past Halloweens as a kid in perspective to me as an adult.
Photo: When you think of how Halloween has become, it’s pretty scary!
I enjoyed Halloween in the U.S. tremendously. My parents always made certain that there were pumpkins to carve and my mother would always give tips or provide help with costumes. Dad always chose appropriate candies for the expected visits of small ghosts and goblins and kept aside sturdy paper bags for us boys. Before we headed out for “trick-or-treat”, both parents would renew warnings about dark places or strangers we didn’t know and to be careful in the dark. Trick-or-treat was in the evening time when I was a boy. Halloween was fun and…innocent.
Now, as I see how Americans must go door-to-door during daytime hours, often accompanied by parents in cars, and hear of vandalism and people being assaulted, and as I see how more kids are only concerned with the amount of candy they get, as they race from one neighbourhood to another to another with sugar as motivation, I question the whole idea of Halloween. How has this happened and Why do we continue with it?
I do know that my father’s last Halloween was not what he expected. No one came to his door. He was all alone, as my mother passed away earlier that year. He was sad, he told me.
I think the worst part of Halloween is the ridiculousness of Sweden having imported the holiday. When my boys were young, it was brand new and, as their parent, I felt it good fun and a cultural initiative to their American background. We had to plan certain houses beforehand to go to for trick-or-treating so they wouldn’t be disappointed with our own enthusiasm.
But, now, I wonder if it was worth it all. Sweden has made Halloween into something entirely commercial. This was the in-between-holiday that Swedish businesses needed to increase sales profits before the big holiday of Christmas came. And many Swedish kids use it as an excuse to create messes or other tomfoolery. Is this what Sweden, or others, really want? Is this how America wants Halloween?
Let’s take time out this holiday weekend and re-consider and look for better alternatives. Find time to enjoy it without the b_s_t that has been artificially created, and forced on us, and think of how nice it is to just be…! Stay safe out there!
For myself- I’m heading towards the mountains in Västerbotten!
In Orkney, Hallowe’en is known as ‘mischief night’. Unfortunately, this is translated into a licence to commit acts of petty vandalism, the throwing of foods – flour, eggs, treacle – at doors, cars and so on. Also, movable items can end up in the harbour, drain covers removed and thrown into gardens, fireworks thrown around. When I was a child, we had to ‘do’ a poem, story or musical item, only in the houses of friends and neighbours, in return for which we got nuts, fruit and occasionally, small change. It was fun. (It was also, in retrospect, quite embarassing!) We had never heard of trick-or-treat.
Trick-or-treat is probably an American expression for protection money at Halloween. Give us candy or will throw toilet paper in your trees etc. If I remember right, originally it started in the U.K., possibly Ireland, that people put food on their doorsteps to keep their deceased relatives happy when these spirits would return on All Saints Night.
Personally, I like the idea of nuts, fruit and small change compared to “sugar”. Poems are just one of many challenges in life. It’s creative. Unfortunately, the world will have to decide what kind of society it wants or put up with vandalism etc.
Thanks for your thoughts, Flying Cat! Your Halloween sounded really nice!
Why don’t we all just selebrate our own tradition? Go to the graveyard and light a candle on a loved ones grave. All the lights there always fill me with hope for mankind. With so much love in the world, we must be doing something right…
Anyway that is what I use that weekend for.
Hallowe’en in Shetland when I was a bairn {just a few years ago…} was kent as Kalecasting Night.
We use to gather in peerie gangs and sneak about the houses nearby ‘wirkin’ dirt’ – we used go into the kaleyards and pull up a few kale plants with muddy roots, sneak up to a door and throw the kale or neeps etc in the door and run away quick!
One time, we ever-so-quietly built a wall of paets leaning up against a neighbours door, knocked loudly and ran away to watch the door opening and the paets rumbling down upon the poor occupant!
It was all mostly harmless stuff, but I remember some more serious pranks- one year a punt {small boat} was taken from the pier at The Voe and appeared on the school roof!
The large lump of quartz rock near the top of Hoofield in Cunningsburgh was known as the “white Horse o’ Hoofield – one year it was ‘tarred’, and until the weather wore it away years later, it was kent as the Tarred Horse.
Another year it was painted blue!
Not an easy task when you walk up and see the height of the over-hang someone would have to use ladders to reach!
A story from a good lot of years ago- an older couple’s peerie croft house windows were ‘tarred’- so when they awoke, it was still dark, so they went back to bed… story goes they didn’t surface till dinnertime!
As well as practical jokes, a favourite thing about Hallowe’en was the ‘Sweerie’ {SWRI} ladies used to hold a party for us in the old village hall; neepie lantern competition, party games, ice cream and jelly, treacle-bannocks suspended on string you had to try & eat without using your hands {yuck!} and dooking for apples which washed off the treacle. Great fun!
Nowadays, I personally celebrate Samhain, the Celtic New Year; remember and send love to my ancestors and loved ones who have passed on, with candles and fairy-lights in my windows.
And of course a pumpkin lantern… haven’t got the strength to hollow out a neep these days…
Karen: Thank-you for your comment and some very interesting information and insight on celebrating Halloween on Shetland. Very interesting, indeed!