All Hallows Eve

It is odd to think that before the 1980s, there no Halloween in Britain.

At least not in the form we see today.

I was born in the mid-60s, and there was nothing about Halloween for us to do. I can remember one year, maybe when I was eight or nine, suggesting to Mum I go trick or treating, and given short thrift as no one on Britain did such things then.

I used to make up scary stories for my friend, Stephen, using a torch held under my chin to appear evil. This was instead of Halloween not as well as.

I podcast I listen to pondered when the American idea of Halloween came to Britain. Maybe it was the scary annual Simpsons episode, or maybe Sccoby Doo from a decade before.

Not that Britain didn't, in its own way, celebrate All Hallows Eve.

The carving or swedes of manglewurzels was centuries old, and so the carving of pumpkins is somehow linked.

But there was no ailses of clothing, plastic skeletons and the such back in the 70s. It seems sometimes we barely had any light, though we were aware. Maybe through "holiday" episodes of our favourite imported American shows.

The dominance of American culture, the gakekeepers protecting us from this, the old TV stattion, made jobless by the arrival of satellite and the internet meant that those gatekeeprs of our cultural references were sidetracked, and we came to wonder what it would be like to trick or teat.

I did take my step-son out trick or treating once or twice, going to where gardens and houses were decorated. He got little candy from what I remember, this being the late 90s. A few years earlier, when posted to Germany, the next day, All Saints, or All Halls Day, churches were packed the bells rang out to banish evil.

Its just another commercial oportunity for shops, but does little harm.

In 2003, I was staring north of Boston, so had time to call into Salem, and see the American version. With bells on. That people really lost their lives there, having been accused of witches matters not a jt when there is fake spiderweb or a plastic skelton to be sold.

Maybe, I shouldn't be so cynical about the whole thing and just let kids and their parents enjoy it.

We'll have the curtains closed and the lights out, nevertheless.