Right then. Halloween. Originally an Irish/Scottish tradition, I rather imagine it was an excuse to get pissed. However, due to the potato and deep fried mars bar famines, a lot of the Irish and Scottish emigrated for the United States and they brought the tradition of Halloween with them. Now tradition and America are words that don't sit very easily with one another. The main U.S tradition that we don't have here is probably Thanksgiving. They have one in Canada too, but we'll ignore that because I don't want to drag bacon or maple syrup into this, eh? Now Thanksgiving is a celebration whereupon the populace give thanks (to whom is unclear) that they have a surplus of food. They then proceed to gather all of the family to eat the surplus of food. I couldn't help but be reminded of this:
Anyway, this is essentially a dry run for Christmas, where they do exactly the same thing, but with presents. D'you know that Father Christmas used to dress in green? Well, that didn't really suit Coca Cola, who wanted to bung adverts of him everywhere wearing red, for that is the same colour as the Coca Cola labels. Anyway they couldn't get into contact with Father Christmas to talk about his image rights for some reason, so they just went ahead with the advertising campaign. He hasn't sued them- yet. Anyway, we've had it brainwashed into us that he was a crimson-wearing Christmas. I seem to have gone off topic here. Right.
Back in the day, Halloween was a little bit about having a laugh about spirits coming to visit because the next day is All Saints Day. I don't understand the link myself. As L.P. Hartley once said, the past is a foreign country- they do things differently there. I don't have a problem with people dressing like twats and having fun- Halloween to me is essentially a rather limiting fancy dress party in that you can only dress as something supernatural. But at some point in the 80's British children picked up the idea that they could get sweets and money by being utter arses. I blame this on E.T: The Extra Terrestrial. Extra Terrestrial: The Extra Terrestrial was an incredibly popular film, seen by millions of impressionable British children who saw other kids dress up in ghost and ghoul related garb, and decided to do likewise.
You know the Easter bunny? That time when Christ died and then the biblical bunny came and hid egg shaped chocolate outside in Judea because he was a sadist and liked the idea of children finding that their lovely Easter chocolate has melted into the sand? And why was the chocolate egg shaped? As far as I know, Jesus wasn't a lizard. My point is that Americans seem to warp traditions. Halloween used to be about dressing up as something supernatural, but it seems that now you can dress as whatever you want, because fuck, we never really believed in that ghost shit anyway so let's abandon what shred of integrity this stolen celebration might have had. I wouldn't be surprised to be trick or treated by a couple of kids dressed as Captain Planet and George Formby. So these kids dress like something they're not and go around door to door demanding sweets and cash from adults with the old favourite "trick or treat." This is despite the kids dressing like this being no advantage to the grown ups- I mean, what's in it for them (unless they're a nonce)? The equivalent of this would be me going to a butcher's dressed as a croupier and demanding free meat, and threatening to do them some unspecified harm if they failed to give me any. This is teaching kids that they can acquire goods through two things which aren't causally linked (dressing up should not equal profit) essentially that through some butterfly effect, chaos theory will make these chiddlers better off. Teaching kids to live their lives according to chaos theory is not the best route.
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| X= Dressing like a twat, Y=Profit? |
Perhaps even worse, trick or treating is teaching kids that blackmail is alright. Essentially, trick or treat means "Give us the goods, or we will fuck your shit up." At the very best, trick or treaters consist of expendable children sent out to forage by their families that are below the breadline- despite the not inconsiderable danger of this being Christmas for paedophiles. At the very worst, this is basically extortion. On any day of the year, this would be criminal, but for the reasons of tradition, it's perfectly fine on one day of the year. Because of religious freedom? I may well go out on the second of June and celebrate the feast day of Erasmus of Formiae. This would manifest itself as launching rockets at people, burning things and blowing shit up, because Erasmus is the patron saint of pyrotechnics. If the police told me to tone it down a bit, I'd explain to them that I'm exercising my freedom of expression/religion and for them to grow up as it's only once a year. So yes, trick or treating is literally daylight robbery. Or it would be, if it didn't happen at night.
Today's Tune
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