The season of all things spooky is now over, and it’s been interesting to see how increasingly willing we are to embrace it in – and, for that matter, on – our homes.
The sight of plastic spiders dangling from doorways or strings of skulls concertinering across windows has had my kids hyperventilating: Halloween may even have the edge on Christmas in the excitement stakes. I mean, you go to people’s houses in fancy dress and they give you sweets! What’s not to like?
Our house’s participation begins and ends with some creatively-carved pumpkins and a bowl of sweets, but some of our neighbours have gone all out with fabulously spooky displays.
We go trick or treating with some of them, and consider it a great way of boosting community spirit while loading up on E-numbers.
Some people hate it, grumbling that it’s an American tradition and what was wrong with carving a turnip and leaving it at that anyway… but I think it’s great (and that turnip carving is not something to romanticise).
The fact that Halloween has happened also means we’re officially allowed to talk about Christmas and all that this involves without feeling like overly-organised weirdoes.
After addressing the big guns – where you’ll be spending it and, if you’re in a couple, whether that’s entirely just and fair, you’ll be moving on to the less stressy topic of where-oh-where you put that bag of decorations and how you’re going to rearrange the furniture to fit the needlessly large tree into the too-small room (or maybe that’s just me…).
One step at a time, though: right now I’m off to stick the decaying pumpkins in the garden waste.
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