Love it or hate it we are now well and truly suckered as far as 'Trick or Treat' goes. Today I saw, in our local supermarket, a black plastic begging bowl complete with 12inch high articulated (glow inna dark) skeleton with nylon batwing cloak... fergdnessakes! Now forgive me, but this sucks on so many levels! Not so long ago (I use that term advisedly), we would cook up some Parkin (flapjack), dad's famous dental filling removing treacle toffee and spend the afternoon making paper witches hats, big bro would put his trusty boy scout penknife to work on a turnip (yes, we didn't grow pumpkins much then), and come nightfall and accompanied by the smell of candle singed turnip we would run around the garden and a modest bonfire, to shout away the bad things. One or two neighbourhood kids occasionally joined us... but we would never ever have been allowed to knock on doors and beg for sweets with or without menace!
From a young age we understood the meaning of this night of misrule, the time when the dead might return, the time to trick and ward off any malevolent spirits by dressing in disguise. We could sing the Soul cake song, accepted as natural the far back in time meaning of summer's end, of harvest and storage and firelight against the long cold dark to come.
Now, in my neighbourhood the parents have given in, but in rather a lovely way as they all dress up, from toddlers to mums and dads and come round en mass at about seven in the evening. Just like on Wassailing night... (We serve cider and cakes, run through houses waving greenery and eventually come to a standstill around an apple tree and sing the wassail songs whilst deeply inebriated)... it's OK to let it be known that you'd rather not join and the band of witches will rustle on past to the next house.
I'm happy to hand out a pile of sweets, MWAHahahahaa! but not so happy that most of these little ones have no idea of their rich pagan heritage.
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| Time Traveller's Compass in metallic plum |
OK so to celebrate the gothic mood I put a new colourway of my
Time Traveller's Compass kit into the shop, it's a lush mix of murky "Celsian' green and darkest metallic plum. I love the mix so much I made myself a necklace, added another link with more spikes on and take delight in feeling everso slightly subversive and gothic.
