Darker nights are drawing in, there’s a hint of a chill in the air and the supermarket’s seasonal aisles are groaning with spooky paraphernalia. Halloween is coming. Every year about now, I tell myself I’m going to get my hands on a pumpkin and bake a pie like the ones my mum would make with us when we were little.
Halloween wasn’t a huge deal in our house, and neither was baking, but I hold warm memories of helping my mum go through the steps that led us to one delicious latticed pumpkin pie and one ugly jack o’lantern that we would display in the window with pride.
As I got older, Halloween became an excuse to ride around on my bike looking for trouble or going to parties wearing risque outfits under the guise of them being “costumes”. Now, along with that proliferation of Halloween tat in the shops – mountains of plastic ghosts and witches, destined for landfill – cafe chains try to exploit my olfactory memory with pumpkin spice in every product. Simple magic has been lost, life has moved on and I realise I’ve never followed through on making that pie.
Now I’m a mum to twin toddlers, which means my hands are full – as strangers constantly remind me in the street – but I’m finding myself inclined to create some magic around this dark time of the year, especially at this dark time in the world. Never one to miss an educational moment, my mum would teach us that Halloween wasn’t always an American celebration of commercial excess. One of its predecessors was Samhain, an ancient Celtic festival still celebrated by some, which marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, and during which the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds grew thin. A time for reflection and drawing your loved ones close.
Last year, my mother and I took the twins to a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) community event in Margate, led by local Mexicans. There was Mexican food and music, and even an altar where people could put pictures of lost family members and pets. It was a lovely cultural exchange that felt fun, meaningful and very much in the spirit of the season. Rather than just being about consumption, the event reminded me that Halloween, Dia de los Muertos or Samhain can also be wonderful opportunities for storytelling – something that should not be underestimated.
When I was five, my mother’s father died suddenly, and it concerned me to discover she didn’t hold all the answers about where he had gone. My questions multiplied and I’d sometimes stand in the playground watching other children running around and wonder why no one was talking about the fact that, one day, we were all going to die. The silence made it feel much more scary.
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I have a lot of bones to pick with Disney, but our family loves the film Coco, which is set in Mexico during Dia de los Muertos. Miguel, the protagonist, crosses over to the Land of the Dead in search of his ancestors. Watching it as an adult makes me realise how much I needed stories like this as a child, that could have helped me make sense of terrifying unknowns such as death. We are living through scary times on so many levels and a celebration now feels like as good a time as any to build strength and resilience through imagination and the exchange of stories.
The twins are still small, but they have loved the books we got from the library with themes of witches and werewolves or yetis and fairies. I have paper Halloween decorations from last year stored with the Christmas ones and the twins have worn their bat costumes again to flap around the living room. These are moments that I treasure already.
They are remembering things now too, which means we are in a memory-building era. I am not going to kill myself with an unrealistic Halloween to-do list, and I don’t want to contribute to unnecessary waste, but this year I’m adamant that we will go to a pumpkin patch together, so they can connect this time of year to harvest and nature. And I’m going to make that pie, although I might have to invite my mum over to help us. I’m still getting started on all of this but I’m going to embrace the celebration in the spirit that my mother did, and try to add my own details to the story. Just don’t expect anything from me at Easter.
