MY DAUGHTER announced at 8pm on Thursday that she was "having a Halloween party on Friday" and that she needed a costume. When she was younger, announcements like this would leave me raiding the hot press, creating some manner of fabulous costume from duvet covers and belts and elaborate hats. But she is older now and this DIY-style just wont fly.
So, off I went to the shop to purchase some cheap yet expensive tat that she'd wear for a day or maybe two. The costumes were all beautifully made and put together, with fancy accessories and wigs. Everything was there, making it super easy to pull together a funny and cool costume.
But surely that's not what Halloween is about? Back in 'my day', Halloween was about becoming a level-seven DIY costume maker, your parents spending zero in cash, as well as zero effort bar maybe blood, sweat and tears searching through the airing cupboard for items to help pull it all together.
Like everything, Halloween has become so commercialised. For half of September and all of October we are told where to buy 'the best' costumes, how to have the perfect parties, how to dress our homes to have the best decorations. The shops are selling Christmas-esque Halloween lights and even 'Halloween trees'. I despair.
I can't help but hark back to a simpler time when the highest form of Halloween commercialisation consisted of a twirly rack of plastic werewolf masks for 50p a pop. Back then, people didn't make such a big deal about the holiday. For people of a certain age, the Halloween nights of our youth were wall-to-wall brown duffle coat monsters.
Mothers and fathers were too busy doing other stuff to spend hours or days trying to construct elaborate and imaginative costumes for their offspring. Net curtains were torn down from the kitchen window to create terrifying ghost get ups and 50p masks – which made breathing difficult and seeing virtually impossible – were teamed with a chunky jumper and your school coat to fashion a terrifyingly life-like replica of 'Anoraked Beelzebub'.
The streets were packed with bed-sheet ghosts and children of mammies who made minimum effort and weren't afraid to show it. There were stripy pillowcased shepherds giving their Christmas school panto attire another run out and little boys who raided their mum's make up set and weren't too sure who or what they were supposed to be, beyond a mess.
There were the lads into 'CGI', who shone a torch under their chin for three hours straight – searing their retinas – and there were kids with their da's belts adorned with dozens of empty plastic bags who told you to shut up when you asked them what they were supposed to be.
Even the fare handed out at people's doors has radically changed. These days, it's all healthy food. Back in the olden days there were absolutely no health and safety regulations as regards Halloween sweets. Some of the posher houses would hand out packets of that yellow crackly stuff that exploded in your stomach if you ate it with Coke, leaving you frothing at the mouth and inducing labour-strength cramps.
The pioneers of the future healthy Halloween food would maybe give you an orange or an apple in your plastic bag, which was duly lobbed into the nearest hedge on your way down the street.
There were no 'sweet police' back in those days. You'd run home, your white plastic bag brimming with treasure. You'd separate out the monkey nuts from the penny sweets and then you'd eat the sweets until your teeth fell out or you were sick. The night wasn't truly a success until someone puked, a theory many of us have taken into the bars and clubs of our adult lives.
In Derry, we're lucky that Halloween is bigger than Christmas: we do Halloween better than anyone and love to embrace the season.
I'll have my house and garden dressed with zombies and skeletons. The kids will dress up, get loads of sweets and have a great time and they'll make their own memories to bore their kids with on Halloweens of the future, harking back to their own 'olden days'. God knows, by then we could have hologram costumes, which will make today's outfits look retro.
Whatever you do this Halloween – be that go to town on costumes and decorations or hide behind the sofa and pretend you're not in when the kids call – have a great time.
