Happy Halloween

Once or twice I went trick or treating as a kid, this wasn't something we really did, it was just something we tried for the novelty of it.  My parents would buy us a lot of sweets for Halloween night and would have a party where we would invite cousins and friends over to celebrate so there was never any real need for us to go door to door to get more.  When it came to costumes, everything was rather basic, a few plastic masks here and there, I think one year we bought costumes but most years we made them, it was a sort of tradition to plan out what we would be. I always wanted to be a Vampire or a Witch - not a Wizard, a Witch, how my parents didn't know I was gay I don't know.  Hocus Pocus was one of my favourite Halloween movies and I wanted to be Bette Midler more than anything.

Two reasons why I loved Halloween more than anything else were the fact that it celebrated the occult and the fact that being different or weird for once was a good thing.  Unlike people who would say it's the one night of the year where they get to behave a certain way, for me that really was true.  I always knew I was a bit of a weird kid and that never really bothered me, but Halloween was a time to shine, the weirder you could be the more it was applauded. 

I have a very sweet tooth too so the abundance of sweets that were on offer made me a very happy child.  From toffee apples, apple pies. crisps [potato chips], dips, toffee popcorn, to jelly babies, jelly beans, and of course every kind of Haribo imaginable.  I loved Halloween movies although I don't ever remember actually watching them on Halloween night, we were always too busy either with the party or being outside somewhere.  In many ways that's like Christmas most movies you associate with it you watch at that time of year but not often on the day itself.

Also like Christmas, we would decorate our house for Halloween each year, we would use black bin liners taped up to make places dark, we had glow in the dark cardboard skeletons that we would hang up, fake cobwebs, glowing pumpkin torches, and a motion activated pumpkin with a speaker inside that would cackle when you walked past.  Every year we would buy an actual pumpkin, draw out our design on its face, and carve it for the night itself, gutting the interior and putting a candle inside.  I remember visiting my Granny every year before the evening began to show her the pumpkin and our costumes and masks.  We would have the party that night and close to midnight there would always be a firework display that had been organized by the estate where I lived so we would watch that to end the night.

Halloween remains to be one of my favourite times of the year, although I am not as keen on fireworks as I once was, I think because most people used them in excess to the point where they lost their lustre.  Still the celebration of the occult remains with me, and the meaning of Halloween being the night when the walls between the living world and the spirit world are at their weakest still holds a tenderness in my heart, whether there is any truth to it I don't really care, the symbolism, the tradition, and the way it makes me feel are what matter more to me, in many ways I feel the same about Christmas, the original meaning is remember for me but it has come to mean so much more to the point where even if I lost all faith I would still celebrate it as a time of togetherness.

The other reason I love Halloween so much is because I love winter and in many ways Halloween marks the end of Autumn, I know in an astronomical sense that's not true but I grew up in Northern Ireland and in Celtic tradition All Hallows Eve or Samhain marks the end of the harvest season so for me it means winter has finally arrived.  I love winter, I love the dark nights, the cold weather, the clothes you get to wear because it's cold enough to put them on, and the snow which is usually a disappointment if I am honest, the UK doesn't really get the kind of snow I would like it to get, and we can't even handle the dusting that we do occasionally get, the country grinds to a halt despite the fact there are many other parts of the world that get feet upon feet of snow and still manage to go on about their lives.  Nevertheless, the period of Halloween through to New Year's and into Spring is my favourite time of year and I look forward to it every year.