If each of the months have a colour, October is Orange. There’s the changing leaves, of course, the rosehips, like mini kumquats on the climbers I haven’t got round to pruning, the skies at 5pm when the short afternoon subsides into a russet sunset, and the tide of pumpkins and pumpkin-branding that washes through the supermarket aisles and windows of the high-street shops from the end of September.
Nowhere (except perhaps in the whole ‘prom’ phenomenon) is the generation gap more marked between my daughters and me than at this time of year. As a child of the 70s in England Halloween wasn’t that much of A Thing (I think in Scotland it might have been more of an occasion?) There might have been a slightly seasonal episode of Scooby Doo on TV, and a themed craft project (‘Here’s one I made earlier’) on Blue Peter, but I can’t remember watching any mildly scary kids’ films in those pre-VHS days. There was no tradition of trick or treating where we lived, and no pumpkins in the shops. Our lanterns were carved from turnips or swedes, and the scooped out flesh always appeared in some form or other at tea time (which definitely felt like a trick rather than a treat.) It was the low-key precursor to the bigger occasion (and health and safety horror show bonanza) of Bonfire Night.
Twenty five years later, when I became a mother, it was all very different. For my children – babies of the mid/late 90s and early 00s – Halloween has always been autumn’s high point, lighting up the shortening days with its pumpkin lantern glow, providing a focus for October half-term, which was spent foraging for costumes in the dressing up box and on charity shop trawls, making bat-shaped biscuits and cobwebbed cupcakes (no Pinterest to provide more elaborate inspiration back then.) There was sometimes a PTA-run party in the village hall on the Sunday afternoon (prizes for the best pumpkin lantern), and a mini trick or treating excursion around the houses of indulgent neighbours, and there would always be seasonal stories at home – Meg and Mog, Funnybones, and a beautiful book called Pumpkin Soup which was a present to my youngest daughter from my oldest friend, which she loves to this day – and afternoons on the sofa watching The Worst Witch, Monsters Inc, Coraline and The Corpse Bride.
I was very much on board with that version of Halloween; a gentle, homespun celebration as the clocks changed and the season shifted from autumn to winter; a marked moment of drawing inwards, closing the curtains against the encroaching dark. And then came the secondary school years, and the focus changed again. Instead of shutting out the dark, teenagers, like cats, demand to be out in it. Halloween began to involve costumes of an altogether less wholesome nature, discussions about why it’s sweet when children in witches hats and cat ears knock on neighbours’ doors but threatening when hulking teenagers in masks and hoodies do it, no matter how innocent their intentions. It meant house parties where the drinks weren’t made to look whimsically sinister with the addition of green food colouring, but were an actual toxic mixture of cheap vodka, blue WKD and Red Bull, and sleepovers that featured no sleep and end-to-end graphic slasher horror movies. After that came the uni years, which I found almost as unsettling, albeit at a distance, after the experience my eldest had with two of her friends in their second year. Not so much Fright Night as Spike Night. A modern day horror phenomenon.
And so for a long time I found little to like about Halloween, with its edge of genuine menace lurking in the dark streets, leering behind the fancy dress masks. I completely lost sight of the fact that, beneath the piles of pumpkins and behind the aisles of themed plastic landfill-in-waiting and lurid confectionary, there’s an ancient festival which celebrates the cycle of the seasons, and of life itself, not just the skills of an M&S marketing sub-group tasked with inventing spooky puns on food names. (Though credit where it’s due for Hell-oumi Fingers and Pumpkin Boo Buns.)
These last few years I’ve been rediscovering those old stories and reconnecting with half-forgotten traditions, setting aside the modern brand of Halloween and focusing instead on its distant ancestor, Samhain. It’s the point in the Celtic calendar which marks the end of the old year and the start of a new one; a time to acknowledge endings and look back to the past, to pause in the darkness and settle into the cycle, trusting that all is as it should be. It’s a liminal time (one of my favourite words); a time of transition. The harvest is over and in the garden it’s hard to find much to admire in the tattered, yellowing leaves and soggy remains of summer’s finery. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to spot the metaphors. As the beautifully-named nature writer Glennie Kindred says in her lovely book The Earth’s Cycle of Celebration, this is the time when ‘the grain mother becomes the crone, the wise woman…’ (Literally me, as the youngsters say.)
‘Samhain… is a magical time. The veil between the seen world of matter and the unseen world of spirit becomes thin, especially at dawn and dusk – a crack in the fabric of space time. It’s a time for communication with the ancestors, a time for divination, omens, portents and seeking the mysteries. It’s a time to drift, dream and vision; a time for inner journeys and connecting to the wisdom inside yourself.’
Now THAT’S more like it.
However you’re celebrating this time of year – whether it’s snuggling up on the sofa to watch Saw III with a Hell-oumi Finger or two, doing the Monster Mash in full fancy dress, or drifting, dreaming and envisioning, I hope it brings an orange glow to the gloom and a sense of connection to your inner self, wherever you find her. The best thing about the darkness is that in it we can see amazing things – fireworks, fairy lights, the constantly-changing moon and whole constellations of stars – that are never fully revealed in the light, if only we remember to look.
And, of course, the light always returns.