OPINION – We ought to de-zombify this commercial Halloween
Happy Halloween #HappyHalloween
Do not, whatever you do, wish me a Happy Halloween. Of all the travesties of the season, the Happy Halloween lark is the worst. This is a season associated with the souls of the dead; Happy isn’t quite the word for it.
And it’s not a happy thing that what was once a folk and quasi-religious festival particularly strong in Ireland has become so very commodified.
Halloween is now an obligatory element of the infant social calendar. Parents whose children haven’t at least a couple of Halloween invites feel they’ve failed. As for the children, they know exactly what costume is de rigueur for fright night. One friend was bullied by her young son into buying a £100 costume, only to find that he couldn’t see out of the mask.
Thus it is the Halloween industry is worth an estimated £687 million, what with spray-on cobwebs, ready made biohazard signs saying: “Danger; Unchained Zombies”, and revolting chocolate horror merchandise.
This is a Zombie phenomenon all right; the way that a genuinely popular festival has been Americanised, and consumed from within by the dark forces of corporate capitalism, and rendered unrecognisable to its friends.
I grew up with Halloween in Ireland when it was still a recognisable celebration, close to All Souls Day, with a hangover of older Celtic elements.
There was indeed a ghostly element to the feast. We’d dress up to scare, in our fathers’ raincoats, a hat of some description and a face mask (about the only thing we purchased). We went from door to door asking for a penny for the bobbin’ — bobbing apples being a thing. And if we got nuts and apples that was ok, but we were really after money, to put in the bobbing water.
There was even a remnant of the old tradition of divination on this night: the tea-bread called barmbrack which everyone eats in Ireland at Halloween has a ring inside, and whoever got it would be the next to marry. Happy days.
It is possible not to spend a fortune on Halloween. Get apples, nuts and buttered tea-bread (stick a ring or a coin inside); hold an apple on a string and get children to bite into it, have basins of water for bobbing apples and put money in too. All the children will get wet. And if anyone complains, say this is Real Halloween. De-zombify the feast.
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