Trick or Trick...

So that's Halloween done for another year. One of the many new wave of holiday event days that has suddenly sprung up in the last 10 or so years. When I was a lad, all we did was watch Halloween I, II, III or IV and get scared by Jason. We never went trick or treating, it was such an American thing, that you only really saw on E.T. and other films from the old US of A. 

But as with everything that started over there, we've now inherited this totally pointless holiday. Don't get me wrong, it was lovely for the kids to dress up and have fun. I also really enjoyed carving a pumpkin and making a delicious pumpkin, sweet potato & leek soup. But the whole trick or treating malarky is rather amusing. 

Apart from the fact that it seems to be an unwritten law in the UK that you don't EVER knock on your neighbours door unless in a complete emergency, it's also rather strange to see how your neighbours live and why they lock and bolt their doors at 5:30pm on a Sunday afternoon. We're not exactly living in Beirut. 

But what I find most peculiar is as parents we are encouraging our children to take sweets off of and talk to strangers. Never forgetting what Charlie said, this is a VERY BAD THING. 






So our children toddle up to the front door, ring the bell and demand that stranger give them some confectionary, preferably the type with a lot of sugar that will make them fat. Is it me, or is this all a bit mad?

But the most annoying part, is the stroppy teenagers who ring our bell and demand some high quality sweets or indeed there will be a bad trick. So it's ok to feel threatened in our home because it's Halloween. No wonder so many of our neighbours kept their lights off and their doors locked shut. 

So why is it ok to encourage kids to eat sweets and chocolate on this day, and yet we spend pretty much every other day trying to control their intake? It's the madness of clever marketing is what it is. If Halloween consisted of children going round collecting fruit from strangers, it would never have got off the ground. Quite simply because there would have been no money in it. 

As a cynical old hack, it's not difficult to find all this commercialisation so distasteful. I went into my local Sainsbury's and found a whole isle of sweets and chocolates that only appear for Halloween. So it's now turned into Easter in the Autumn. All those Big Food companies are rubbing their hands with glee as we buy chocolate witch fingers and chocolate eyeballs. So just another example of how it's impossible to escape all this sugary madness. And we wonder why so many kids get fat and crave sweets. 

I had no problem grabbing loads of sweets when i was younger,  and I didn't need some extra pointless holiday to encourage me to eat more. The Halloween spirit was summed up for me, when I was in the queue to pay for my bag of carrots and apples (naitch) in front of me was what looked Augustus Gloop and his family from hell. Piled high in their trolley was the following:
- Monster Munch variety pack x12
- Kit Kat x24
- Mars/Snickers variety packs x 2
- Tizer
- Lucozade
- Coke (non diet)
- Variety of Mr Kipling caked goods

Stripey tops definitely make you look fatter. FACT.

...and  that was just what was on the top that I could see. The family consisted of a huge mother, equally huge father, boy probably around 9 who was as big as me and a girl who couldn't have been older than 4 sitting in a pushchair that was buckling under the weight as she sucked on a Yazoo 1/2 litre bottle of banana milkshake. Well it's got milk in, so it must be good for you!

And sadly this is probably the norm. I don't know if this was a special Halloween shop, or simply their need to top up their sugar fixes, but it made me feel ill just watching them fight over the bags. Seeing them was enough of a fright for me to last into the next Halloween and beyond thank you very much. 

So now we can look forward to Fireworks Night, where we can encourage our children to hold lit flames and watch things explode at a not very safe distance. Hurrah for mad Holiday's. I for one can't wait for Slapsday, where we get to slap random strangers who just annoy us.