High street tat is the real Halloween horror show
OH HALLOWEEN, everyone thinks you’re American now. How that must rankle, to be viewed as a kids’ version of the far cooler Day of the Dead. I always thought ‘cultural misappropriation’ referred to the fury of liberals when non Native American teenagers wore Top Shop feather headdresses to music festivals, but maybe it really means what Walmart has done to Halloween. Or for Halloween, depending on your perspective.
Halloween has completed a strange triangular trajectory. From its ancient pagan Irish roots, it long ago went to America where it has been living happily — if gaudily — with Irish Americans, and lots of other Americans, ever since. Trick or treat, because nobody except actual Irish people can pronounce Oíche Samhain, never mind spell it.
In Ireland, it was always turnips — ugly, terrifying purple turnips — that were the original jack-o’-lanterns. None of your jolly orange arriviste pumpkins. There were no sexy witches either, no sickly sweet cupcakes with sugared bats. No. Irish Halloween was as the night should be — horrifying in its simplicity. Being waterboarded for apples, cracking teeth on barm brack choking hazards, and fighting blindfolded over fifty pence pieces. Zero glitter.
But then something odd happened. America sold Halloween back to us, and in doing so, made it a massive marketing thing in Britain, where until five minutes ago it didn’t exist. When I left Ireland for England, back in the late Neolithic period, there was no Halloween — if you wanted to celebrate Halloween in ’90s London, you had to come to my house. English friends thought Halloween was my own private mental health issue.
And then Walmart changed that. Year by year, Halloween has become bigger and bigger in Britain.
When Walmart swallowed the UK supermarket chain Asda, the Halloween aisle went from not actually existing at all to taking up a large chunk of the shop floor, with ten tons of orange and black plastic tat and shrill tinny screams and BWAH HA HAAAAAs on a soundtrack loop. Lift muzak from hell. Wow, could this actually be happening? Well, yes. The other shops caught on.
First the supermarkets, then Mr Kipling, (his fondant fancies come with slime at Halloween), then the entire high street. Hardware stores with witches in the window, banks and post offices draped in fake cobwebs, posh delis doing daft culinary interventions with pumpkins. Costume shops running out of fake blood, the bakers churning out ghost and monster cakes.
For years — decades — I have ploughed my lonely Halloween furrow in these foreign lands, forcing people to come around to my house dressed as zombies and ghouls to apple bob and apple snap, poisoning them with toffee onions and chocolate dipped Brussels sprouts. My children have grown up believing Halloween to be at least as important as Christmas, and an awful lot more fun. And finally, the world has caught up with me. I knew it would happen eventually. Anyway. I’m off to make some eyeball soup and severed finger biscuits for tonight. Unhappy Halloween!
