Many years ago, while on holiday
in the south of France, we discovered a delicious rosé wine: dry and crisp, and served very chilled, it was the perfect accompaniment to a bowl of lunchtime moules marinière. We bought six bottles, stowed them in the back of the car and wended our way back to Blighty, by which time the rosé had turned to vinegar and was undrinkable. We learned a salient lesson on that trip – that some things just don’t travel well – a bit like, dare I say it : trick or treating.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Over the years I’ve ripped my fingers to shreds whittling a spooky face into an over-sized pumpkin with the best of them; I’ve even been known to make fairy cakes, cover them in luminous orange icing and pipe black spiders on top which, for someone who loathes baking, shows a certain amount of maternal resolve, I feel. When Son was small, he and his friends would make their own scary masks and paper hanging bats and get together for Halloween teas. Trick or treating for them was confined to a few pre-primed neighbours. I wasn’t going to let him miss out just because I don’t ‘get’ it.
Trick or treating, in its current guise, is a relatively new concept here in the UK. When I was a child it didn’t exist, neither did any of the paraphernalia that goes with it. I don’t remember even seeing a pumpkin – the nearest thing we had was a swede or a turnip which, I believe, were used by the ancient Celts to fashion tiny lanterns to light the ancestral way on All Hallows Eve. We were brought up to wait until offered a sweet; never to ask for one and not to speak to anyone we didn’t know; so even now, the idea of allowing children to knock on the doors of strangers and demand confectionary makes me uncomfortable.
The local TV news yesterday morning reported that measures had been taken to ban the sale of flour and eggs to anyone under the age of eighteen and that police cars would be patrolling the area advising marauding gangs of hooded youth how to trick or treat responsibly.
So, bearing this in mind, I armed myself with a bag of cheap sweets to ward off any evil little spirits who banged on my door last night hoping it would prevent an omelette adhering to my windscreen. When all this malarkey first started, I was never sure whether it was me that should deliver the trick or the treat and I have been known to squirt expectant visitors with a water pistol. It’s all very well having fun, but the line between fun tipping over into vandalism and intimidation is a fine one: some elderly folk are truly frightened.
A sample of merchandise available in a local store
I’m not bothered about our shops and garden centres being stuffed full of hideous Halloween miscellanea made in the Far East. The amount and variety spreads each year, like fast growing bacteria. Even our top end supermarket (the one that prefers to be called a food store and was the last major chain to capitulate to Sunday trading), has been seduced by the Halloween potential: and why not – it’s a huge, money making business leaking nicely into the run up to Christmas. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart.
We can’t claim trick or treating as a tradition, either. To be sure, I checked the definition in my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, which confirms:
Tradition; [Mass noun] the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.
Traditions, therefore, have to evolve – we can’t just steal a tradition from another country, from another culture and expect it to work or be accepted by all here. On the whole, Britain is pretty hot on tradition: we are steeped in it. In a few days time we’ll be celebrating Bonfire Night, commemorating the foiling in 1605, of an early activist called Guy Fawkes, from blowing up the Houses of Parliament. (With hindsight, and beautiful iconic building aside, he might have done us all a favour had he been successful, given the current shower of ineffectual incumbents).
Several of the villages around here have been building bonfires for weeks, as they have done for years, in the way that beacons have been built and lit for centuries. Life-size models of Guy Fawkes will be prepared to sit atop each fire. The weekend skies will no doubt be full of the sights and sounds of loud, flamboyant fireworks.
I wonder if this celebration is exportable? Probably not: I can’t imagine that burning effigies of terrorists in public would go down too well anywhere else…but you never know.
I did enjoy reading this Jenny, you have such a great way of writing BTW, sorry about the wine, what a disappointment.
It is funny this business of importing traditions from other countries. I’ve only ever thought of trick or treating as an American tradition having lived there and experienced it first hand. Everyone there grew up with it, handed down from generation to generation. I had no idea that it had crossed the Atlantic and that British kids did it until I moved back here and I was very surprised! It was not the Halloween that I grew up with!!
I am going to do a post about Bonfire Night as that was the one tradition that I couldn’t give to my children gowing up in America and which I missed dreadfully. As you so wonderfully put it, I can’t imagine this British tradition being repeated anywhere else, it just wouldn’t work on so many levels 😉
Love your last sentence…where indeed?? Food for thought 😉
Re the wine – ah well, you live and learn – we still drink it when we’re in France and it tastes fine!
I was interested to hear your take on this, seeing as you have experience from both sides of the Atlantic – it must have seemed natural for your brood who were brought up in the US – what do they think of it here – does it seem fake to them, I wonder?
Looking forward to the Bonfire post with eager anticipation… 😉
It doesn’t seem the same to them over here, quite fake to be honest, so they just remember what it was like when they were younger in America.
I really did enjoy your post Jenny, I am still smiling 🙂
Have a great weekend!
Thanks – you too 😉
We are the big business capitol of the world here in the US, and I’m amazed at how this purely commercial event has trickled into other cultures. Most American children have no idea why the tradition started. For them, it’s all about getting a fun costume and trolling the neighborhood after dark for candy. When we lived in Germany (from 2000-05), Halloween merchandise was slowly creeping into the major chain stores. I’d be interested to see how much it’s grown in the years since we left.
Yes it would be interesting to know if mainland Europe is so fanatical as the Brits are now – I’ll have to check with our French friends to find out what it’s like there. My guess is, that where there’s marketing, there’s a Halloween party waiting to happen!
Loved Bonfire Night growing up in Newfoundland as a child – we didn’t import it as much as we took it with us – being one of the earliest permanent English colonies in the New World 🙂
Very powerful last paragraph.
Keeping the home fires burning, eh – or something like that! Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Here in the U.S. every holiday is all about the dollar. Halloween candy is jammed on to our grocery shelves starting in September and come November 1st, it’s drastically reduced in price to make room for the Christmas decorations, toys and candies. When stores began “Black Friday” shopping on Thanksgiving Day, it turned my stomach. I’m surprised to hear Halloween has transported to other countries, but I’m not surprised the vandalism that can occur went along with it. I loved Halloween as a kid, but it seems different these days. Pickup trucks full of kids from outside our neighborhood invade our streets and a thundering heard of kids I’ve never seen before take over our front porch…they don’t even say, “Trick or Treat!” I’ll be interested in hearing more about Bonfire Night, Jenny…sounds like fun!
I agree with Jill, it’s all about the money-making potential (convince people they need to buy the paraphernalia).
I’ve turned into quite a crabby curmudgeon about the materialism of all these “holidays.” I like tradition, yes, but this transporting of American holidays to other countries (it’s cropping up in Germany now, too), as you so eloquently pointed out, Jenny, is not about tradition. It’s a media & marketing gimmick.
Funny I was talking about this with my parents last night and my dad said “Did we remember Penny For the Guy?” Although Bonfire is still totally massive in this part of the country, nationwide Hallowe’en seems to have replaced 5th November. Interesting to think why exactly this has come about. Maybe it is because of the firework safety thing? People are basically encouraged to go to organised events and not hold their own, but at this time of year, I think there is a need in us to have some festival to look forward to, and so Hallowe’en is an easier thing for supermarkets etc to push.
I think I’m probably a crabby curmudgeon too – we could start a club, Tracy! It would be nice to think that if the supermarkets were all making huge profits on their non food seasonal items, they could reduce the price of some of the food essentials throughout the year. Then again, pigs might fly.
I don’t know how it is in England, but I do know that the profit margin on food here is incredibly low. Grocery stores here have to make their money on sheer volume at pennies per food item (because Americans are very unwilling to pay much at all for food–the percentage of our gross income that goes for food is one of the lowest in the world). And, then, of course, that spurs them to get into other items (like seasonal decorations, candy, magazines and cards, and now, most of them offer prepared foods, and on those, they make a much higher percentage of profit).
I remember ‘Penny for the Guy,’ Denise. I even think we had a Guy making competition at school one year.
There is definitely more marketing mileage in Halloween than Bonfire Night, although the price of fireworks rockets every year. (sorry – couldn’t resist). Much safer to go to an organised event but I’m not sure they let you have sparklers. I do love a few sparklers – and as long as there’s a bucket of cold water handy to drop them in once they’ve finished, then no-one’s going to get hurt. It’s all about being prepared 😉
Jill -it’s always a shame when commercialism moves in and ruins a festivity – look what’s happened to Christmas, too.
I had a knock on the door last night from four little girls – all under ten – who I’d never seen before. I asked them if they knew me – they said no they didn’t – and then I asked them where they were from and they told me an address at least a mile away. I gave them their sweets and off they went and I was left wondering where their parents were.
As far as Bonfire Night goes, we’ll leave that to Sherri – she’s promised to post about hers! 🙂
Sorry to hear about your wine, but you’re right, some things don’t travel well. We certainly have our issues over here with the whole Thanksgiving/Halloween/Christmas triumvirate. It’s just one big push to spend lots of money on junk, imho. MerryThankshallomas! Great post. 🙂
MerryThankshallomas – that is brilliant – you should start patenting greetings cards 🙂
It’s getting increasingly harder NOT to spend money on junk – junk is taking over the planet!
Thanks! Unlikely that there’s a future in greeting cards for me – I just launch into sarcastic comment mode whenever I’m confronted by rampant commercialization! You are so right – junk is taking over the planet!
Terrific post, Jenny. So very well said and I can`t help but agree on most points. Though I don`t thing poor Guy was really such a bad chap 😉
On the trick or treating thing, the one thing I will say in it`s favour(or should that be favor?) is that it gives us a chance to meet neighbours (neighbors?) we normally don`t get to meet.
On the subject of exporting French produce… I recall stuffing our suitcases with French cheeses once. Boy, did everything stink by the time we got off the ferry….
I agree with you about the neighbour thing. When Son was small we knew quite a few people in our road – we all had children around the same age and although none of us have moved out, I have no idea who any of the other neighbours are! 🙂
Oh,I don`t believe we are meant to get stuck in and know everyone in the neighbourhood. That harks back to a time when everyone truly depended on everyone else to survive. Now, for that, we have our work colleagues. In an agrarian society our neighbours were our work colleagues.
So, when we`re exhorted to love our neighbours as ourselves, really that`s about loving our work colleagues.
And that`s enough to be getting on with. 🙂
You might be interested in this article!
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3020882/monsters-selling-candy-the-billion-dollar-history-of-trick-or-treating-in-america?partner=rss
Thank you Tristram – this is a really great article – how do you find these things? 😉
Your steeped in tradition Bonfire Night is NOT exportable. And infinitely more interesting than our Halloween.
And don’t get me started about Halloween. My husband loves it, having grown up in San Francisco, California. (where obviously everything is nicer) Love your insights and writing and story-telling.
Oh go on – start – I’ve been surprised by the responses from my American blogging friends – we Brits assumed that you all loved Halloween 😉
But not all of us (I am refraining from a big rant that may wind up on my Google pages)….the omelet thing is creepy. But what we have here is downright silly. Where did all this come from? I thought it originated in Great Britain with the eve of All Saints Day. No? Except for Thanksgiving, all our traditions are very new and taken from the Europeans.(sorry)
This is a test response to see if its working today Rod
Ha it worked, I’ll try this I hate Halloween
Hmmm so much for that theory. I’ll be back later with a more fulsome response to your post. Thanks for checking the spam basket.
Yes, I’m getting you loud and clear now – three times – wonder what happened yesterday, then – must have been some Halloween gremlins in the works…
I honestly can’t remember Hallowe’en as a child – it must be a recent import (re-import) from the States. If it gives the little ones a bit of fun then that’s fine.
Now, when I was growing up, Bonfire Night was the thing. Not the big staged events you get today but smaller, community bonfires wherever there was a bit of a space among the houses. The Mums used to provide food, the Dads supervised the fireworks and prevented the kids falling in the fire. Maybe it still goes on but I’ve not seen it in many years.
I also have memories of Bonfire Night when Mum would bake the potatoes and Dad and his friend would light the fire and the fireworks while my sister and I stood well back. Our village also had a communal bonfire on the field behind our local pub – nowadays that field (and the Bonfire) is no more – just a modern housing estate.
I found it interesting that my Russian students are all anti-Hallowe’en, but are intrigued by and very jealous of our Bonfire Night!
I agree with Roy though – proper Bonfire Night celebrations are few and far between these days. My dad used to pour farm diesel on the bonfire to give it a kick. Happy days. Jx
Your Dad sounds like my Uncle Ivor – remember him from a previous post? We always had our own bonfire at the end of the garden with a few modest fireworks. From what I can remember, it used to rain a lot but Dad and Ivor were never deterred.
In the U.S., Halloween has gone from home-made costumes and simple treats to expensive multi-level costumes worn by rude or pushy kids too old to be out on Halloween night. We used to collect for UNICEF–we carried the little boxes and people would drop in coins and occasional dollar bills for children needing food and medicines–and often the donors would give us, the carriers of the boxes, some candy. I miss those days.
And I really feel bad about your wine!
Well, I’m relieved to hear that Britain doesn’t after all, have a monopoly on rude and pushy kids!
I love the idea of collecting for UNICEF – I think I might promote this at school for next year. Wish me luck 😉
And as for the wine … we got over it – in all honesty, it didn’t cost us a fortune and oddly, we’ve had it since, in situ, and it is still very drinkable 🙂
There is a true spirit behind Halloween as there is with Christmas – that of the old Celtic new year – which did originate here. It’s a time for remembering and honouring our ancestors as well as thinking about the future. The trick or treating originates from when our ancestors would dress up in disguise to ‘hide’ from malevolent influences.
And your wonderful recent post reminds us all of the ancient meaning – I would recommend anyone to click over to yours for some evocative writing on the subject.
The trouble is, as with everything that can be exploited, the true meaning gets lost along the way to making big money. It’s the same with Christmas – I’m always shocked (but not surprised) that when asked why we celebrate Christmas, my students tell me that it is to get presents. Is this an example of worshipping at the altar of commercialism, I wonder? 😉
Thank you Jenny! It’s strange that when so many of us seem to be saying we want a more meaningful, simpler life, the commercialism only increases. Someone is buying all the stuff, so perhaps we get sucked in without consciously realising it.
I enjoyed this post, Jenny. I grew up with Halloween and have always been among the minority who didn’t like it. It astounds me how the decorations become more and more over the top each year. But it amazed me even more when we were in Spain last week to see how Halloween has spread in Europe. Bizarre. Re Guy Fawkes, it is undoubtedly not easily transplantable, but it is very cool. Dare I say that in the US the open fires would probably be considered too dangerous, as opposed to hidden guns!
Thanks Jane. That is bizarre about Halloween in Spain – not something you’d expect at all.
Regarding bonfires – most of our community bonfires are well organised these days with public health and safety high on the agenda. Fewer people have home fires these days – when I was a child we would wake up the next morning to a smoke induced fog from all the fires in our neighbourhood!
I arrived in Canada in 1967 and had never experience d a Halloween celebration before. I was quite taken aback by the extravagance of the event. In this years it hadn’t quite reached the level of greed and commercialism it has today.
We allowed our kids to take part and dutifully put out bowls of tooth-rotting candy. At that time most mum’s and dada’s worked with the children to make their costumes. We had fun carving pumpkins and roasting the seeds. I did draw a line at eating (what is for me) disgusting pumpkin pie.
But today I can find nothing good to say about the event.
The parents of many children seem to exhibit greed and pass it along to the young ones.
We looked after the dogs while our daughter and son-in-law took our grandchildren trick-or-treating. So we were on duty to hand out goodies to the mainly costumed kids.
One little tyke starred at our bowl of candy and had the audacity to ask “is that all the candy you have?” ‘don’t trip and hurt your greedy little self as you go down the steps” now that’s a curmudgeon! (I din’t actually say that to the little cutie).
Enough was enough when mums with tiny toddlers fast asleep in strollers came up to carry on collecting candies for them! For them it was clearly about grabbing the most stuff…
Yes, I wasn’t even going to mention pumpkin pie for fear of insulting a whole nation, but I think it’s disgusting, too!
We had a couple of children turn up this year with a BUCKET each to fill with sweets: unbelievable. They each went away with one small lollypop from me. Our house has probably been marked down as ‘not worth bothering about’ which is fine by me!