Posted on 10/27/2003 1:42:51 PM PST by Pokey78
SOMETHING in our national spirit recoils at the prospect of Halloween and all this hideous event stands for.
The belligerent begging; the spiteful, petty vandalism; the intrusion of leering strangers banging on your front door when your own granny wouldn't dream of turning up unannounced.
The British like to bitch about American imports like Starbucks and McDonald's, but at least these places serve a useful purpose. What use is Halloween?
This shabby American ritual is an excuse for institutionalised begging from hairy-armed thugs who can hardly be bothered to remove their hooded tops, let alone take the trouble of donning fancy dress.
And at least real beggars accept the possibility of refusal. The cretins who come calling on Friday will not take no (or a boiled sweet) for an answer.
The British can't do Halloween. In America there are no acts of bullying and vandalism on Halloween because Americans have got guns. You chuck an egg at someone's front door in Detroit or Dallas and you are taking your miserable life in your hands.
In America, Halloween is for the little ones. It's just like ET - all the little tiddlers dressed up as ghouls and ghosties, and smiling adults pretending to be afraid.
In Britain, the little ones rule the streets for about 15 minutes and then make way for the acne-pocked mob.
The irony is that we have ditched a genuinely British festival because it was deemed too dangerous for our squeaky-clean, safety-conscious age.
Like millions of other Brits, I grew up with the whiff of gunpowder in my nostrils. The thwarting of Guy Fawkes is what we should be celebrating at this time of year.
Sparklers, rockets, bangers, Catherine wheels and jumping jacks - this is our culture, not some hooded youth banging on the door of some cowering pensioner.
Guy Fawkes has slipped out of fashion, just as Halloween has become accepted and celebrated.
There are even attempts to depict Halloween as a genuine pagan tradition, dating back many centuries.
Yeah, right. In its current incarnation, Halloween dates back about as far as Simon Le Bon's love handles. Halloween is an 80s invention from across the Atlantic, just like coffee shops and herpes. And it sucks.
Last year in Dorset - Dorset! - the police were called to investigate more than a hundred Halloween-related crimes, including criminal damage, arson and threatening behaviour.
On Merseyside, 50 of Knowsley's leading yobbos are being taken to Alton Towers for a day out in the vain hope that they will be knackered by the time night falls on Friday.
What a fine way to tackle anti-social behaviour - take the little b******s to a theme park.
The government talks a lot about tackling yob culture and then does nothing at all to stem a night that promotes and encourages the worst kind of boorish behaviour. Indeed, it is tempting to see Halloween as another New Labour product.
It has all the symptoms - the craven acceptance of a lousy American idea, the casual disregard for the safety and happiness of the ordinary citizen.
And the preference for a bit of foreign rubbish over something that has served this country well for countless years.
Sooner or later someone is going to get seriously hurt. When the question is "trick or treat" will the answer one day be a bucket of cat's urine?
The plague of burglary eventually produced Tony Martin, the householder who refused to take any more. How long before Halloween produces its own Tony Martin? How long before some hooded moron goes a little too far, or some harassed householder strikes back?
And then they will all be on our TV screens, the concerned politicians, the grim-faced Old Bill, the weepy relatives. But by then it will be too late.
Give me the good old days of November 5. Give me a banger in my Wellington boot and a sparkler up my tank top and a sky full of fire. Halloween is far too dangerous for me.
Trick or treat? Just try buying off the ponces with a Werther's Original and see what happens.
Well, you can't really call the TP festooned trees vandalism, I guess. That's about the worst we get around here.
In Britain? You got candy from going door-to-door on Halloween in Great Britain in the 70's?
In Britain? I was in Great Britain in the early 80's and nobody went door-to-door begging for candy. At most on the fifth of November, teenagers would wheebarrow a dummy around asking for "money for the Guy." The only jack-o-lantern around was mine.
And don't you forget it, Basil...
Were you in Britain?
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