What is Halloween anyway?

YOU know a day has been truly adopted on the calendar of events when half the shop is festooned in merchandise for Halloween, writes William McInnes.

I WAS after avocados and all I got was a talking skull with glowing eyes saying it wanted my soul. I sighed a little as I fondled the avos, fossicking for a good ’un and thought to myself, the end of October used to mean the Melbourne Cup was only days away. That truly marvellous day in November when almost everybody in the country stops for a few minutes, maybe holding a sweep ticket, waiting to see which neddy crosses the line first.

Has our Halloween obsession gone too far?

Halloween tips and looks with Granville TAFE

I know it’s at the pointy end of the multimillion-dollar gambling industry, but it’s still fun and who else would stop everything for a horse race? It is, as the cliche goes, uniquely Australian.

Unlike the talking skull. And all the other paraphernalia that haunted the Woolies I was in.

Halloween. There were large, rubber rats, and skeletons of rats, ghouls, glowing spiders, and shrouded skeletal figures hovering from the ceiling, draped over a poster of a vacantly smiling Woolworths employee with the store’s tagline emblazoned under spiderwebs, “We’re the fresh food people!”

More like the fresh ghoul people. You know a day has been truly adopted on the calendar of events when half the shop is festooned in merchandise for Halloween. Such as those big jack-o’-lantern orange pumpkins that are useless for eating but great for ornamental carving, their swollen size given pre-eminence over the stoically solid and tasty Queensland blues and butternut pumpkins.

The decorative skull was being repeatedly pressed by a little girl who was giggling when its eyes flashed and it moaned, “I want your soul”. She asked her mum if they could buy it. “We should make our own decorations,” said Mum.

“How can we make a skull, Mummy?” asked the little girl. “And a skull that talks to you, Mummy?”

The mother sighed and picked up the skull that wanted your soul and put it in the trolley and said to her daughter, “Only one, Charlotte. Only one.”

Little Charlotte nodded and pressed the skull. “I want your soul,” it moaned.

And she laughed.

I don’t mind Halloween. I don’t really know what it’s about besides giving people the excuse to dress up and have a party. It’s sort of fun seeing gangs of kids in capes and fangs and ghoulish outfits parading around for their trick or treats.

It’s an appalling amount of sugar little humans will be stuffing into their lolly bags as they knock on doors. Heaven help you if you don’t give a treat and go for the trick, because I don’t think irony or a sense of fun has anything to do with the idea that Halloween is a neverending flood of sweets.

A friend once tried to tell me there was a deep cultural significance to Halloween and mumbled something about All Hallows’ Eve and Celtic heritage. Picture: The Plain Dealer, John Kuntz

A neighbour last year opened his door in a gorilla costume and bellowed, King Kong-style, at the trick or treaters, only to be confronted by a parent with an axe in the middle of his head who had a crack at neighbour Kong for frightening the kids.

“It’s all about trust, mate,” said the fool ghoul, with his axe wobbling indignantly.

A friend once tried to tell me there was a deep cultural significance to Halloween and mumbled something about All Hallows’ Eve and Celtic heritage. I nodded and said that Eve from All Hallows’ might be scary but that was only a matter of opinion – maybe she was just intent on getting a good education. After a moment’s silence wherein my friend tried to understand what I was saying and then realised I was banging on about the venerable All Hallows’ school in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, I was told
I was an idiot. Then my friend laughed and said, “I bet there was an Eve who went there.” And then he added, “Didn’t you go out with a girl from All Hallows’?”

“Trick or treat,” was all I said.

I was told I was an idiot again, with an unprintable adjective added.

It seems to me Halloween as it’s celebrated here is a bit secondhand and downstreamed, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun and inventive. And it’s only one night; I just wish that as I went about my avocado purchases I didn’t have to worry about talking skulls.

William McInnes is an actor and author