Trick or Treat? Definitely not a treat...

Dear Mum,

With Gaddafi dead and protestors still camped outside St. Paul’s, I feel that I need to voice my own rebellious attitudes.

My unhappy topic is that dreaded time of year. Halloween. I know you feel the same way that I do, Mum.

It’s about as appealing as Sir Brucie on Saturday night primetime – a bit of a nuisance that one could generally do without.

Perhaps if our nation went the whole hog and embraced it as the US does then you and I would feel differently.

But we Brits sit more on the fence. A token carved pumpkin might be positioned on the doorstep and perhaps a witch’s hat is donned when greeting trick or treaters.

This is really where my issue lies.

I was always on trick or treater duty in our house because I was the youngest (though I’m still unsure as to why this fact justifies it being my duty).

This is fundamentally why I dislike Halloween.

I hasten to add that I have no problem with children. It is rather the ideology, the conventions and immorality of the holiday and custom of trick or treating.

For example, a six-year old dressed as a grotesque and unrecognisable monster, with a mask stained with mock blood and a plastic machete in hand, is not what I want to open my front door to.

Equally, I think a witch’s outfit is predictable and dull. Why not be original and dress your child as Ben from Outnumbered this Halloween? I’d find that pretty unnerving. 

I also resent that the vast proportion of trick or treaters seem to be over 15 years of age.

My idea of a pleasant Autumn evening doesn’t involve boosting the sugar levels of a spotty, bearded adolescent dressed as the grim reaper.

More importantly, however, I resent that these are strangers requesting that you place sugary snack in their hands.

I’ll go months without speaking to my neighbours. But 31^st October arrives and the neighbourhood comes knocking at your door.  

And these strangers are judgemental. There is a spectrum of trick or treating snacks, which guarantees a specific reaction depending on the snack’s ranking.

An apple, for example, will gain you an egged house. A KitKat will receive an ‘are you kidding?’ look. A mini mars bar a polite “thank you”. A mini packet of Halloween Haribo will be rewarded with a toothless grin.

Last year, at uni, my housemates and I forgot to buy treats. We fobbed the children off with some cheery bakewell tarts that has passed their sell-by dates before turning off all the lights and pretending we weren’t in.

But even if you pretend to have gone out, you can’t relax on Halloween night. The doorbell is constantly hammered by new trick or treaters and those doubting your absence.

If you do partake in the festivity, the minute you abandon the basket of sweets and lower your bottom to the sofa it is guaranteed the sodding door bell will ring again.

And, damn, you’ve run out of chocolate. The last group were disgusted enough by the Penguins you gave them, what else can you turn to?

Which is where, Mum, you should go down in Halloween history.

Placing a handful of honey roasted nuts, which we ourselves thought tasted somewhat unusual, in individual plastic bags and passing them off as ‘bats’ droppings’ is genius.

That evening, I did rather enjoy greeting the trick or treaters.