Going nuts at Halloween
01.11.07
Have you ever thought it a
bit strange that, since Halloween seems to be taking
more and more a back seat these days in terms of
importance as an event, how the costumes appear to be
getting that much more elaborate and expensive!
I mean when I was wee, Halloween and Christmas were
months apart which kinda made it easier to make a bigger
deal of Halloween.
Nowadays Christmas and Halloween stuff is on sale side
by side in the shops and if that doesn’t dilute the
importance of both, I dunno what does.
Still the fact remains that every year the array of
costumes on offer gets bigger and dearer. And for some
people the pressure is on to make their child the
bestest or the scariest child on the street.
Yep years ago we were content to put on a dark coat and
a mask. One of those ones that are |
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really cheap now with
elastic that cuts right through the top of your ear and
through which you could never see, or indeed breathe for
that matter!
Or if we really wanted to be scary we’d have a sheet
over our head, usually with eyeholes as poorly aligned
as those masks.
Why that was supposed to be scary was always a bit of a
mystery to me. I mean was it to remind other children
that it was dark and they’d soon have to go to bed? Cos
let’s face it folks even if you make wooooo hooooo
sounds it isn’t really scary!
But nonetheless it was the kinda thing we used, cos for
the most part the costumes weren’t all that important.
Any kind of thrown together get-up would do, I mean it
wasn’t exactly a fashion show we were going to!
Well it wasn’t back then but these days things seem to
have changed a bit, and as a modern parent it would seem
that you can’t have your child going out in any old rags
for Halloween (as opposed to when we were younger cos
that’s exactly what we wore!)
And so instead of rummaging through bags of old clothes
looking for suitable attire (wasn’t that half the fun?)
these days deciding what costume to wear usually starts
with a trip to the shopping centre.
After all it’s so much easier to get a costume there –
not that it will be in any way original of course.
Chances are if you buy a costume in one of these stores
there is a good chance they could be walking down the
street with hundreds of other mass produced latex-masked
Spidermen, Barbies, or Pumpkins.
Which kinds gets me wondering…did the druids really
believe that the souls of the dead would come out and
wander around from house to house dressed as Spiderman
looking for sweets?
The other thing of course is that years ago the fun was
all about going from house to house and by and large
grown ups prepared for that by purchasing tonnes of nuts
and apples and, if you were lucky even sweets.
And yet while the costumes become more elaborate and
expensive, the real irony is that nowadays there are
less and less children out on their Halloween rounds.
So for most of Halloween, your doorbell is quiet. This
means that you pass the long night alone, hour after
hour, just you and that tonne of nuts, apples and
fun-sized Mars bars. |
And let's be honest here –
you don’t like to see the stuff go to waste now do you?
Even if you are strong willed, the temptation will
eventually get so strong you’ll have to give in.
Yep, even if there’s not a single knock on the door.
Even if you never see a latex-covered kid as
Frankenstein, Spiderman or Witch, you could spend the
evening haunted by the wee voices from the bowls in the
corner shouting…. ‘come on, come on….eat me.’ And that
folks is what I would call scary! |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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