Sunday 31 October 2010

Halloween: The Pointless Charade

Every year, the end of October happens at some point; usually towards the end of the tenth month of the year. This is bad enough due to the fact that it means we are nearing Christmas, so the rate at which Christmas related adverts are shown on TV, increases. It also means that the clocks change and go backwards an hour. This is a mixture of good and bad. Good because we get an extra hour in bed on the last Sunday of the month, but bad because it means the following 5 months get dark quite early. Halloween also happens at the end of every October, and this year, it's on a Sunday, meaning this year we annoyingly have 25 hours of Halloween due to the sodding clocks going back. Typical!

A lot of things I have grown to dislike as I have grown up like Christmas, patronising children's TV presenters and boredom. However, Halloween has been something I have disliked, nay - hated my entire life. As a child I was forced by my Mum yearly to dress up as a witch for Halloween, or whatever she had decided to buy that year. I never went Trick Or Treating either. That was partly due to the fact I was a fussy eater and rarely liked any of the sweets strangers would offer me. However, it was mainly due to the fact, that despite the fact no-one could see me behind my green witches mask, I got very embarrassed. I didn't like Halloween.

That is one of the only things me and my Dad actually agree with. Neither of us particularly likes Halloween; especially the Trick Or Treating part of it. As a result of this, many eggs have been thrown at our house. Most years it is the same routine. Children ring the door bell dressed in ridiculous outfits. We say 'No Thank-you', then moments later a few eggs are thrown and then they run away. Children who come after that, normally get sweets, but only as a bribe to not decorate our house in eggs brought from the store down the road.

Since when has throwing eggs at a house been a 'trick'? A trick is putting a whoopee cushion on a chair or gluing a pound coin to the pavement. Throwing eggs at a house is vandalism and also known as 'being a completely spoilt bastard who has a tantrum because you didn't get a sweet for dressing in the same costume as a bunch of other kids, and in turn deserve to have eggs crammed in their eyes and be forced to eat the eggshells of a dozen eggs that have been mixed with dog poo from down the road'. Well, that's what I call them anyway...

Throughout my life, I have refused, as best as possible, to celebrate Halloween in any way. It ranges from dressing up while being a kid, to going to Halloween parties, to watching scary movies on Halloween and even eating chocolate covered in foil which is decorated in a Halloween-esque way. I fail to the point. I may have liked it if we took up the name which some parts of Ireland have for it: ‘Pooky Night’, but we didn’t, so we’ll never know.

What does Halloween actually celebrate? Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Easter celebrates the death of Jesus Christ and his selfless sacrifice for us. Valentine’s Day at least is a way of celebrating your love for another human being. Bonfire night commemorates the time when Guy Fawkes (from the era of 'The Stuart's', for a pointless history lesson about my name-sakes), tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament to prove a political point. Halloween is just there to fill a gap; and that gap has been commercialised like every other celebration.

Halloween is so commercial now, just like Christmas, but just not as bad. Luckily, by the time shops start to think about stocking Halloween items, they find they have little room because they had already filled it with Christmas items in August. If Halloween was in June, I expect the shops would have crammed their stores full of stuff as soon as the Easter eggs went.

I have one idea which I think shops should stock in a bid to make money. They should sell eggs without a yolk. That way, you can make a point without damaging property, but you are also playing a joke in that the home owner would think you have thrown real eggs at their houses. You see. I should be a big salesman in London, pitching ideas like that to a load of fat, greying men in suits. There is a pun about ‘yolks’ and ‘jokes’ there somewhere, but I refuse to find it.

Anyway, I know I am a cynical person, but I do think that if you are above the age of 16 and you don't have any children, you shouldn't be celebrating Halloween, and should instead be getting a job or be looking in the mirror thinking 'I really have messed my life up', while probably also thinking 'I wish I had a boyfriend/girlfriend'. If you don't agree, then well, good on you. You're a happily naive person who lives a life without any real direction or purpose. YAY!

As is evident, I don't write blogs to make people like me.

P.S. You can’t even justify Halloween by mentioning The Simpson Halloween Specials, because the can sometimes be rather unfunny. Shame.

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