A couple of weeks ago an announcer on the Weather Channel enthusiastically noted: “the London version of Hallowe’en is called Guy Fawkes Day, and they actually burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on top of bonfires; I think our own Hallowe’en is much more civilized.” Naturally I forgive her of her ignorance of British culture (and the history of Hallowe’en), and I certainly wouldn’t expect her to add that this year is the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, but calling American Hallowe’ens civilized? Now that is really taking the candy.

Since I arrived here I have been overwhelmed by the amount of costume superstores that spring up magically around every city and town. They sell everything from sexy nurse outifts to Jar-Jar Binks masks, even costumes for your pet dog. People go all out here. Houses are decked with all manner of cobwebs, skeletons, and jack o’lanterns, while gardens are filled with comical tombstones. Grocery stores prepare way in advance for the panic-buying of candy. The TV shows endless repeats of hammy old horror movies for a fortnight beforehand. Hallowe’en is truly one of the big American celebrations: commercial, overblown and utterly saccharine. And I got right into the spirit, eagerly carving my pumpkin and displaying it on the doorstep.

I was rather nervous about the impending onslaught of trick-or-treaters, though. Hallowe’en in an American town is spooky enough to anybody who grew up watching Michael Myers hack his way through doors, but I was worried about what would happen to us if we ran out of candy. Would we fall foul of ‘tricks’? Now we aren’t talking about card tricks here. I had heard that the night before Hallowe’en is sometimes known here as Devil’s Night, when youths would routinely smash windows and set fire to things (in my native Burnt Oak that is known simply as Saturday night). The TV spoke of the possibility of having flaming dog-poo left on the doorstep, or being toliet-papered, that is, having your tree or house covered in rolls of Andrex (soft, strong, and very very wrong). What sort of society is this that has bred such an atmosphere of retribution? The whole notion of ‘trick-or-treat’ is basically extortion – give us sweets, or the porch gets it.

I took no chances. We stocked up on candy – little packs of M&Ms, ‘fun-size’ Snickers bars, that sort of thing (by the way, there’s nothing ‘fun’ about a chocolate bar the size of your big toe). You cannot give them home-made treats such as cookies or apple pie here, nor even fruit. A few years back, there were a few cases of apples being poisoned (surely in the spirit of Snow White?), and razor-blades being inserted into candy. To this day, hospitals all over America offer a free x-ray service on Hallowe’en to check sweets for razors – they really have taken the fun out of the fear factor here, haven’t they. Anyway, the trick-or-treaters started knocking as soon as the Sun went down, pint-sized candy-addicts in badly thought-out costumes, most of them Mexican, all of them sugar-crazed. One girl had made no effort at all, dressing in her pyjamas and putting colored glitter on her cheeks. Does that deserve a candy? She had a pillow-case with her, expecting to fill it; to be honest, she looked like she usually did fill it, and empty it just as quickly. But on the whole the children were far more imaginative than the ‘bin-liner cloak’ witches costumes of my own and many other Brits’ childhoods. Thankfully, however, we suffered no ‘tricks’ (that I know of…), and I still have a few sweets to nibble on. The night of fear is over.

Yet there are some, apparently, who feel that it would be better to pretend that Hallowe’en does not exist at all. I don’t mean those who turn out the lights, close the blinds and wait for the doorbell to stop ringing. I have been told that there are now many schools which refuse to acknowledge Hallowe’en at all, and have cancelled the costume-wearing traditions seen by many American schoolchildren as a rite of passage. It is now celebrated as ‘Harvest Day’, and all of the ghosts and scary stories have been removed. Now that is what I call uncivilized.

Originally posted 11/1/2005