Louise O'Neill: 'Trick or treating might be cancelled, but Halloween can still be saved.'
Picture: Miki Barlok
I was supposed to be on a writing retreat this week, but I cancelled once the new restrictions were announced.
(It was the right thing to do but I also didn’t fancy my chances of going through a Garda checkpoint trying to claim novel-writing as ‘essential work’.)
You must be disappointed, a friend said, and I replied that I was, but disappointment was a familiar feeling in 2020. For many of us, we know how fortunate we are in comparison to those who have lost a loved one to this virus, whose businesses have been devastated, or those who are immunocompromised and have been unable to leave their homes for months.
We rattle off the reasons why we should be grateful and yet this year still seems to be full of disappointments; weddings pushed back and rescheduled and rescheduled again, the number of guests allowed dwindling with every day.
While it seems impossible that there will be thousands of young Irish people who will never know what it’s like to sit their Leaving Cert, they also did not have a Debs or a Grads, these rites of passage that we take for granted.
The pint or the glass of wine after work, meeting friends for dinner, going to the cinema or the theatre or a live gig or to see a stand-up comedian, the city break to Paris or London or Berlin, and, best of all, hugs, holding onto the people we love so tightly it feels as if we are melting into one another’s bones. A life without this can feel very joyless, indeed.
Now, we are facing into Halloween, only a week to go until the celebration of Samhain.
The festival marks the beginning of winter, or the “darker half” of the year and it’s difficult to imagine how it can get much bleaker. I know that many parents are worried about disappointing their children, for whom 2020 has also been a strange, upsetting year but who might not possess the ability to process or contextualise their anxiety.
I’m sure it’s not easy to tell them that trick or treating has been cancelled; it’s fine for adults to say that it’s just one year, that things will be back to normal by Halloween 2021, but that can feel like a lifetime when you’re a kid. Just like us, they need their small pleasures too.
I don’t have any children so I’m loathe to give parenting advice. But I do remember, very clearly, what it was like to be a small child at Halloween.
We didn’t do a lot of trick or treating – there were fewer houses in my neighbourhood at the time, so our options were limited – but we always had a party anyway. My father was very creative, making costumes for my sister and me (he wouldn’t allow princess or ‘pretty’ costumes, Halloween was about being scary, he said), and setting up games like Bob for Apple, Snap Apple, and The Flour Game, which, if I recall correctly, involved burying your face in a plate of flour for some reason.
Pumpkins weren’t as readily available in Clonakilty in the 90s but we watched American movies and we knew what was what, so Dad would be forced to carve a turnip while my mother decorated the house with fake spider webs.
Of course, we often had friends at these parties – our next-door neighbours, first cousins, sometimes the children of my parents’ friends— which is not feasible this year. But I also remember one Halloween when it was just the four of us, my mother, my father, my sister, and me.
My mother set the kitchen table, dotting candles on every available surface and turning off the main lights. We ate homemade barmbrack smothered in butter, my sister and I vying to see who would get the gold ring and be the first to marry.
We pared apples and threw the peels behind us to see what shapes they formed, telling of the first initial of our future partners. (I have no idea why we were so obsessed with getting married?!) We told ghost stories by the flickering candlelight and I pretended not to be scared because I was a big girl now. Looking back, I think it might have been my favourite Halloween night ever.
Trick or treating might be cancelled, yet another disappointment in a year pockmarked with them. But Halloween can still be saved. Dress up, decorate the house, carve the pumpkin.
Plan a few games you can play at home together. Get your best ghost story ready and prepare to watch Hocus Pocus for the hundredth time. There are still small pleasures to be found if you look hard enough.
Rich and Pretty. The debut novel by Rumann Alam (who has just been shortlisted for the National Book Awards for his latest work) centres around two women, one beautiful and one rich, who have been best friends since they were children. Full of acidic wit and wry observations.
IMMA has closed its doors until October 27 but once it re-opens, I am eager to see the Paula Rego exhibition. Entitled Obedience and Defiance, it’s a major retrospective of an incredible artist.
