Pumpkins, elaborate costumes, and fancy face painting of modern Halloween leaves columnist Emma Connolly a little bit cold … homemade costumes and monkey nuts are more her style!
I’VE spent a lot of the past week being all nostalgic about Halloween of yesteryears (ie the 80s) when no one had yet heard of face painting, and the concept of buying your costume was still as alien as walking around with a bottle of water or take-out coffee.
Ah thems were the days! All we needed to pull off what we figured was a rocking Halloween costume were some black bags, and a few cereal boxes. Oh and a bit of wool or twine.
You simply punched some holes in the bag for your arms and wore it over your head – voila!
And for the mask, all you did was cut a circle from the cereal box and secure it around your head with the wool (not sure why we didn’t use elastic? Had it been invented yet?).
Now, even though this was the era of Saturday morning’s Anything Goes and Mary ‘make-and-do’ Fitzgerald was my hero, every year without fail I’d cut the eyes in the wrong place (either too high, too low, or too far apart), and measure the twine either too long or too short so it ended up quite the horror.
But you just had to roll with it – there was no going back to make another as siblings had already used up the remaining cereal boxes.
Besides, it’s not like you really wore the masks anywhere except around the house as the notion of trick or treating hadn’t yet hit our shores, at least not my neighbourhood anyway.
As for entertainment, it was snap apple – and that was pretty much it. All it involved was attaching an apple to a string, suspending it from the ceiling and leaving it hanging there for a few days during which time various people would try to take a bite out of it with their hands behind their back.
And yes, it did go brown (essentially rot) but we didn’t seem to notice.
And yes it was a bit gross and there was a good chance you’d get a tummy bug from the germs but from a parental point of view it was very easy to pull off. No strings attached, except for the one holding the apple.
The humble armbrack or bairin breac remains a Halloween favourite.
Halloween refreshments were also straightforward: mainly just monkey nuts. Again, this was back in the 80s before nuts really came into their own – I don’t think we had heard of pistachio nuts or hazel nuts or anything besides the humble salted peanut so monkey nuts were as sophisticated as you got.
Sophisticated and drier than the Sahara desert. That’s if you ever managed to crack one open which was a job in itself.
Not forgetting the barmbrack (which until very recently I thought was called barnbrack – why didn’t anyone tell me?).
Now this was something we got very excited about (and still do) as my sisters and I all wanted to get the ring even if it would turn your finger green in around five minutes flat (it signalled you’d get married within the year – bless us!), the next best thing was the coin (riches) while you’d try to avoid the pea (poverty), the rag or the stick (signalling more bad omens, while also being major choking hazards).
Note how there wasn’t a (rock hard) pumpkin that had to be carved in sight. Happy days!
• I miss those simple times. Halloween is now a major ‘event’ – gaining ground on Christmas celebrations every year.
I don’t mind the decorations so much (it kind of pains me to admit it but I love them, actually), it’s the dress-up-days that kill me. Our mothers never had to endure the torture of face painting at 7.30am and trying to get people out the door to school before they can critique the brutal job you’ve done.
Major wizardry required! Worst of all is that the outfit you got them to try on a few days earlier and sign a declaration that they solemnly love it and will happily wear it to school ... is usually rejected with four minutes to go, and you have to conjure up something else (from your imaginary wardrobe department, where else?).
It’s not just school that has a dress up day either, all the activities do as well – so you have to produce ‘looks’ for a dead soccer player, dead camogie player, dead dancer (you get my drift). You’d be like the walking dead from the effort of it all!
• I always hold the line and try to work with what costumes we have in the interest of a circular economy.
I’m no saint but I hate buying ‘more stuff’ that isn’t essential. So my first option is to try to pass off last year’s costume – it’s always worth a try even if I know it will be rejected out of hand because it’s ‘last year’s costume’.
Next, I try to pawn off a mish-mash of stuff that could work if you were any good with a sewing machine, which I’m not, so usually then with two days to go I’ll panic and spend a small fortune on stuff that doesn’t arrive until the day after it’s needed. Blood-y hell is right!
• Right so, an update on the bikes I’m trying to sell that I wrote about last week: they’re still 100% available to a good home.
That initial high I was on when I thought I was going to make my fortune has diminished somewhat (entirely) with each passing day. In my mind, I was already reclining on a lounger on some lesser known Caribbean island writing my memoir.
The opening line went something like: ‘It all started when I decided to take a chance and sell some bikes on DoneDeal. That marked the big turning point in my life ...’ Ah well, if it was that easy, I suppose we’d all be doing it (I’m gutted!).
• Finally, brace yourself for the scariest thing of all this Halloween: the change in time. The clocks are either going forward or back (I can never remember) but the upshot will be dark mornings and even darker evenings. It always takes a while to get used to, so console yourself with another slice of barmbrack ... and for the love of god keep practising that face painting!
