I’m not quite sure what happened this year, but our children seemed to really “get” the wholeHalloween thingfor the first time. They were more excited about enacting pagan celebrations of the underworld than they were about the prospect of a morbidly obese coca cola advert in knee length kinky boots climbing down our chimney last year (father christmas… keep up!)
In our household, the pagan rituals were mostly centered around inviting friends, dressing up, and eating as many sweets as possible in as short a time as possible.Anybody who has small children will tell you what happens when you feed them junk… the climb to the high is akin to a ride on an Atlas moon rocket, and the fall off the other side draws parallels to a “Chuckie” version of the Duracell bunny.
One really great thing came out of the evening - an unanticipated benefit of a house full of rocket powered children. Each time we heard knocks on the front door, our tribe of berzerker children stormed it for us. We got to sit back and catch up with each other over the party food.
Oh yes… the party food!
Before heading out into the cold night air, we filled the table with all manner of 1970s style party food - sausages, cheese on sticks, various chopped vegetables, homus, and a number of chocolate creations - one of which was called “rocky road” that I had to stop eating. I will neither confirm or deny that I felt really quite ill after consuming rather more of it than I will ever admit to.
Once it was properly dark outside, our little gang stepped from the front door, out into the darkness - 4 witches, 1 skeleton, 1 tomato boy (or at least, I think that’s what he was), and 3 grown ups. I’m guessing you can’t really classify me as a grown up, but I was there.
Within a few houses we figured the secret code is pumpkin lanterns - if there is a lit pumpkin, it means the house has sweets, and will be happy to answer the door. I have bitter memories growing up of pretty much all the houses in the street having “GET LOST” signs posted on their doors for the night (they didn’t say that really, but they may as well have).
You remember I mentioned the rocket fuel effect of rubbish food and fizzy drinks on the younger children? It kicked in - or rather it ran out - at about 7pm. First of our gang to drop was our youngest, “Little Miss 5”. Luckily we had anticipated it happening, and were already headed back towards home. When her energy runs out, it really is like a spent rocket - I had to carry her the final hundred or so yards, and within sight of the house she very nearly fell asleep, with her head on my shoulder.
We now have three plastic buckets lined up in the lounge, filled with half a candy store’s worth of goodies. It sounds awful, but we’re going to have to ration them - it’s not all bad though, we can probably get Little Miss 6 to levitate for chewy teddy bears.