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By the time you read this, it will all be over for another year. Witches will have parked their broomsticks, vampires will have put their teeth in steradent and the Werewolf will have turned back into your labradoodle. I am, of course, referring to Halloween, that ridiculous excuse for a party which was celebrated all over the world last night.
So, what is it all about? Why do we get the kids all dressed up, spray fake spider webs all over the house and bake muffins with fake fingers sticking out?
Back in the early days of Christianity, there were so many saints and martyrs that there were not enough days to give one each. So, in the 9th century the church decreed that November 1 should be a day for all saints or All Saints Day.
It then came to be believed that the souls of all the people who had passed during the previous year would ascend to heaven on All Saints Day and so the last chance any tormented souls had to seek vengeance was the night before, All Saints Eve. In Ancient English a saint was known as a halwe or hallow and so we get All Hallows Day and respectively All Hallows Eve which became Halloween.
That’s how we got to the event, so how did we turn it into an excuse to frighten the children and allow adults to get dressed up in scary costumes and behave appallingly?
This has been going on for centuries. Around the same time the Celtic communities had a festival called Samhain which was a celebration of the gathered harvest and a last good shindig before the winter. Somehow Samhain and Halloween all mashed into one and the party was born.
Nowhere takes Halloween more seriously than the good ole US of A where they spend millions on it and prepare for weeks in advance. In early September 2006, I was at a conference in Las Vegas and in order to get Mrs Beedie a small gift, I popped into a large shopping mall. There I found a huge Halloween shop, spread over two large units selling everything from wigs to webs and enough plastic gore to keep a small hospital busy for months. I had a conversation with the store manager and he told me they only operate for two months before the event and that they make enough money to go on holiday for the rest of the year. Yes, the Yanks take it seriously.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with having fun. Life is short, the world is frequently miserable, and a little harmless nonsense can be therapeutic. Adults are entitled to dress as Dracula if they wish, although one might question the judgement of anyone who chooses to spend an evening wearing fake fangs while trying to nibble a delicacy.
But perhaps we should acknowledge the absurdity of it all. We frighten ourselves with imaginary monsters while ignoring the genuinely frightening things happening in the real world. We tell children not to accept sweets from strangers for 364 days of the year, then devote the remaining day to sending them around the neighbourhood to collect them.
Still, Halloween is here to stay. The pumpkins will glow, the ghosts will groan, and the vampires will queue for the last fun-size Mars bar.
Jackie@JBeedie.com