Julie Jay: I'm already quizzing my son about next year’s Halloween outfit

This year, I made up for my son’s insistence on reusing last year’s Halloween costume by getting creative with my own outfit, and by creative, I mean donning a bin bag and a Post-it note

"My kids were still a little young this year to fully comprehend the boundary-bending potential of the Celtic New Year. As a result, when the last Friday night came, they pooh-poohed my new costumes and decided to go with the same outfits they had worn last year, devastating their mom, who loves a bit of creativity in the costume department"

HALLOWEEN is done and dusted, and I’m a little sad it’s over. My history with Halloween, like most Irish ’80s babies, has been chequered. I come from a generation where mothers would wrap their children in toilet tissue and convince their trusting junior infant they were Tutankhamun.

Back then, the festivities were a celebration of all the ways you could recycle a black refuse bag, with little understanding of how changing one’s race for the evening was in any way problematic.

I have no doubt that my twin brother was not the only ’80s child who arrived at a birthday party wearing my father’s gold wedding ring and a heavy gold chain, insisting he was Mr T, with the full support of his parents.

It’s no wonder we go all out for the end of harvest season, because Halloween, like gerrymandering, is 100% Irish. We have given many things to the United States down through the generations — Gabriel Byrne and square-headed policemen, to name but a few of our more famed exports — but surely Halloween has been our greatest contribution to American culture.

This year, we ran out of treats at a ridiculously early hour, and so the night was mostly spent with our house lights turned off and hiding under our kitchen table, because that is what adults do.

Packing away our 2025 Halloween decorations, I had a flashback to my teenage years, when most of my peers dressed up as a Spice Girl for festivities. I, on the other hand, generally came as either Mary Robinson or Albert Reynolds, depending on the availability of shoulder pads at the time.

Roaming the corridors, offering to put candles in random windows, did not get the warm reception I had hoped for. Much like Mary Robinson, I, too, would only come to be fully appreciated by my peers when I similarly achieved international humanitarian status upon collecting a whopping €25 in sponsorship money for the 24-hour Trócaire fast.

As I trundled through my college years and early 20s, and in a bid to garner as many shifting opportunities as possible, Halloween was the night I usually dispensed with as many clothes as I could without risking being arrested by local guards for indecent exposure.

My kids were still a little young this year to fully comprehend the boundary-bending potential of the Celtic New Year. As a result, when the last Friday night came, they pooh-poohed my new costumes and decided to go with the same outfits they had worn last year, devastating their mom, who loves a bit of creativity in the costume department.

Once again, Number One went for a skeleton, an environmentally sound move considering we had one in stock, but also a bit snore for the rest of us.

Number Two had spent the last two weeks running around the house asking for a pumpkin on repeat, and whether he was requesting his outfit from 2024 or a spiced latte, neither is happening because I a) purchased a Chase ensemble from Paw Patrol and b) generic coffee franchises haven’t hit Dingle yet.

Halloween is a mad time, when you think about it. We are essentially dressing our kids up in something extremely flammable and hoping for the best.

Over the last week, the skeleton costume lost me hours of sleep over a misplaced skeleton hand and my having to ransack the house on the hunt for one tiny, flammable glove. So frustrating was this never-ending game of hide-and-seek that every time I found the glove in question, I was tempted to set fire to it and my house to ensure I never had to pull the couch apart again trying to find it.

As we pack away the costumes for another season, I have been quizzing Number One on what he will dress up as next year, because I love wishing my life away like that. Similarly, I enjoy quizzing him on what he would like for dinner before he has even consumed his first bowl of cereal, a habit so annoying that he will probably go no-contact with me at the first opportunity, come adulthood.

I have always loved Halloween and the freedom it brings to step outside of yourself and become somebody else, even if only momentarily. Despite my kids’ refusal to think outside the box for the big night itself, I ended up donning a black plastic bin bag and a post-it note reading: ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.’ As anyone who watched Sex and the City back in the day will know, Carrie’s break-up note from Jack Berger was the stuff of nightmares, which made it the perfect scary costume for trick or treating.

Admittedly, the concept went over most people’s heads, but the one woman who got it thoroughly enjoyed it, which made the sacrifice of my last remaining bin bag all the more worthwhile.