Everyone, it seems, loves a good party. It’s October and all
the shops are full of party ideas and of course gifts, for Halloween. Maybe I’m
just a killjoy, but I don’t really get very excited about it. As a child I was
only peripherally aware of Halloween. Bonfire Night was the big party I used to
get excited about. If I ever recognised the day at all, it would be spending it
with my childhood friends, furtively reading ghost stories by torchlight,
whilst listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on the Bare Mountain”, in the hope that
my mother wouldn’t come in and break up the party. All quite innocent and we’d
all be safely tucked up in bed before the witching hour struck.
In recent years, though, I’ve become increasingly aware of
the proliferation of tacky ghoulish merchandise in the shops at this time of
year, and I was astonished to read a few days ago that Halloween is now the
second most popular family occasion in the UK behind Christmas, with parents
likely to spend more than £100 on parties for their children this year.
Apparently the money we spend on Halloween has soared by a massive 2,300% over
the last 10 years to be worth £280 million. What on earth has precipitated this
change? When did Halloween take over from Bonfire Night, a peculiarly British
tradition, which celebrated the day Guy Fawkes failed in his attempt to blow up
the Houses of Parliament way back in 1605? When I was young, I loved Bonfire
Night. Whilst our fathers went about building a bonfire out of old furniture
and dead wood, our mothers would be preparing food for the feast – jacket
potatoes, sausages and all manner of warming treats. The men were also
responsible for the fireworks display and we, the children created the effigy
of Guy Fawkes who would be ceremonially burned on the bonfire. After Christmas,
Bonfire Night was the most eagerly anticipated festival of the year, for all
that we didn’t get any extra school holiday. It was a big, low cost, community
event.
So what happened? When did Halloween take over from Bonfire
Night?
I suppose one theory would be that tripping around in a naff
witch’s costume is infinitely less dangerous than burning bonfires and setting
off fireworks (the Fire Service are no doubt relieved) but I have a sneaking
suspicion that it has more to do with money, or rather commercialism, and where
there is commercialism, you don’t have to look far to see the influence of the
USA.
Halloween is absolutely huge over there, and the bigger the
festival becomes, the easier it is to get people to spend vast amounts of money
on things they don’t need and will no doubt throw away the following week.
Hang on, isn’t that what happens at Christmas? Indeed it is,
and guess what? The modern day Santa Claus is generally believed to be the
invention of Washington Irving, a nineteenth century New Yorker, who wished to
create a benign figure that might help calm down riotous
Christmas celebrations and refocus them on the family. Loosely based on a Dutch
gift giving Sinterklaas, Santa Claus was actually a secular figure, and it is
the work of various advertisers that has created the image we recognise as
Santa Claus today. The English Father Christmas was not a gift giver, but
rather a personification of Christmas and a Yule-tide visitor. It is only from
the 1870s that he became increasingly associated with the American Santa Claus,
and it is the American Santa Claus who now dominates Christmas in all those countries
that celebrate it. Now I wouldn’t want to suggest that dear old Washington
Irving cynically adopted the idea of a gift giving Santa Claus, in order to
bolster the coffers of Macy’s, but I have no doubt Macy’s seized on Santa like
manna from heaven, the actual child of heaven (Jesus) being somewhat less
interesting.
In case you wondered, I hate Christmas too. What we get in
the run up to Christmas is the absolute opposite of the spirit of good will,
the kind of good will that permeated London, during the Olympics this year, for
instance. What we do get is millions of people trailing round shops, pushing
through the crowds, desperately trying to think of presents for relations they
won’t see for another year. The adverts start early, exhorting us to spend!
spend! spend!, as we worship the god of commercialism; and if, like me, you
decide you’d rather just ignore the whole thing and go away to somewhere they
don’t celebrate it, you’ll find the price of a plane ticket out of the country
has quadrupled!
Where will it end? Other minor festivals are now much bigger
than they ever were. Valentine’s Day might once have been considered a bit of
fun, but now it is big business. Why? Well it’s big business in the US, so why
not here too? How about Easter? As children, we of course loved Easter. What
child wouldn’t? All those delicious chocolate eggs, but now it seems children expect
Easter gifts too. Mother’s Day was a
day on which we children got our mother some flowers and maybe wrote her a
card. Nowadays, woe betide the husband who doesn’t buy his wife a big present
or take her out for dinner. Where America went before, it seems we follow, and I,
for one, am tiring of it, as attempts to part us from our hard earned cash
become ever more aggressive. I don’t want anyone to get the idea I’m some
miserly old grump, who never enjoys a party and never buys anyone a gift. I
enjoy a good time as much as anyone and I love giving presents. I just don’t
want some American corporation telling me when I should be doing it.
